Tuesday, 17 November 2009

• Sushi Osaka

  535 8th Avenue
  New York, NY
  212-629-0288

  One thing that New York doesn't lack is a lot of forgettable restaurants that either serve middle of the road or crappy food.  There's just so many people in New York, especially tourists that you're bound to get some patrons but it's just a question of whether you'll get enough business to cover the high cost of rent/lease.  Which is possibly why I forgot to review a few New York City restaurants before jumping to other cities but I degress. 

  Back when I was in New York I stayed on Long Island so much of my travels into the city started off from Penn Station and it doesn't help that I preferred to walk so everything seemed to center around Penn and Times Square.  This time I was meeting up a friend who lives near Penn so there was little reason to travel too far out of both our ways so we settled for a sushi restaurant nearby.

  

  Nothing stands out from the outside.

  A very basic interior:

  

  There's little to no wall decoration and the back hallway to the washroom is piled high with boxes.  This isn't a place you'd want to bring a first date.  Nothing here really spells out Japanese to me and the people running the restaurant were Chinese anyways, if you care about that.

  Sushi Osaka was running a special of 2 rolls of any kind for $20.  Most of their rolls are between $9.99 - $10.99 so you're not getting a deal there but a few are priced up to $12.99.  So we ordered a lot of rolls.

  Best of the best roll (spicy salmon, avocado, and cucumber topped with tuna and eel) and Dynamite roll (spicy yellowtail and tuna topped with spicy crab meat):

  

  Rolls were loosely packed but didn't fall apart too easily.  They primarily used chilli for anything spicy rather than spicy mayo.

  Best of the best roll and Rainbow Roll:

  

  The raw rish were not super fresh.  It was standard fare.

  Interestingly, we ordered what we liked and ended up not saving any compared to the regular price.  The minced artificial crab meat pulled out to line the outside of the Dynamite roll was different.  Seems the crab meat was pulled earlier as it was dry.  BBQ Eel tasted like something you get from a grocery store.  Service was decent but not steller.  This was just another sushi restaurant that didn't stand out to me.  It just had a lot of rolls with funny names like "Best of the best".  If you're in New York City, you can find better but if you're just in a hurry, you wouldn't be reading this review to figure out whether to eat at Sushi Osaka anyways.

  Eric Tummy Points: 3 out of 5

  

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