Nobu

Ew and I met up with ac and the other dk this past Monday at Nobu for SD Restaurant Week.  For those of you unfamiliar, Restaurant Week is a chance for local restaurants to offer 3-course prix fixe menus for $30-$40.  Usually, restaurants give you 3 to 4 options for each course. 

I've always heard mixed things about Restaurant Week.  Many people don't think that the food served during Restaurant Week is very good, because chefs are paring down their menus to accomodate the price.  Or the menu selections off Restaurant Week aren't very imaginative since it is your typical selection of tartares, sea bass, short ribs, etc.  Others are more in favor of it, because it allows them to have the fine dining experience without having to spend exorbitant amounts of money.  And after dining at Nobu, I think I have to agree with both sides.

The first course at Nobu was a choice of unagi, seared salmon, and mixed seafood ceviche.  After ew's and my horrible ceviche experience in Lima, we opted for the salmon and unagi.  Both were competent dishes, but the "mashed potatoes" that the chef claimed were so essential to the unagi, did not add to the dish at all.  And the unagi itself was a little too sweet for my taste.  The salmon was pretty much a salmon sashimi in a yuzu type sauce.

There was a "side" course of sushi rolls before the second course, which were your standard salmon avocado roll and a more interesting yellowtail jalepeno roll.  The jalepeno definitely was a nice touch to the roll, but I felt like it completely overpowered the yellowtail.

The second course was a choice of artic char, short ribs, or scallops.  I personally had the char, which was well prepared, but nothing really stood out from the dish.  I enjoyed how the skin was crispy, but it was a large piece of fish that seemed unelegantly done.  The scallops were well-cooked as well, but the basil slaw that accompanied it didn't seem to pair with the dish very well.  The short ribs were just that: slow-cooked short ribs with a heavy, sweet, tangy sauce that they claimed had to go with the cherries on the bottom, which once again, did not seem to add very much.

The third course was a choice of a "whiskey shot," something similar to a tiramisu: layers of cream with some crumble with whiskey infused inside, a green tea chiffon cake, and one other item that no one got.  The heaviness and richness of the cream made it tough to finish the whole thing, despite the initial rave reviews.  The chiffon cake came with a blood orange sorbet, which was light and fresh, but did not seem to pair with the somewhat bland cake.

All in all, I think this experience really brought home those mixed reviews of Restaurant Week I described earlier.  I don't think this was Nobu's best menu.  The proteins in the main courses weren't anything that lent to really inspired dishes.  The appetizers were also very safe, off-the-shelf sushi/sashimi dishes.  I've heard great things about other parts of their menu, such as the miso black cod, so I'd like to believe that the menu offered to us probably wasn't the best foot forward.  With that said though, I do think the preparation of the food is representative of the restaurant.  Everything was well cooked.  My fish wasn't dry, the short ribs were tender, the scallops well prepared.  But the sauces were a bit overdone; in a way, they were "Americanized" from the clean, light flavors I was expecting from haute Japanese cuisine.  And it does upset me a little bit that the menu wasn't more inspired.  It goes back to an earlier post of mine where I talk about how chefs in Paris are turning away the Michelin star in favor of more personalized, high-end yet casual and affordable food.  I think Nobu is probably the furthest away from this, in the sense that eating at Nobu definitely has that cachet of premium quality.  Was it a good meal for $40 + tip and tax?  Yes.  Could it have been better?  Undoubtedly.  Would it have been worth the normal Nobu prices?  Definitely not.  So that's the mixed bag:  Restaurant Week doesn't let you really experience the truly inspired dishes from a restaurant, but at the same time, those truly inspired dishes probably aren't worth the price, so at $40/person, it's definitely a great experience to go to a nice restaurant with decent food and spend an evening with friends.