Blowfish - Sushi to Die for?

2170 Bryant St. (20th St.) San Francisco, CA, 94110 (415) 285-3848

I met my friend P at Blowfish Sushi last night so we could catch up on news and gossip after her recent trip to London. At the bar we supped on suprisingly good mojitos whilst they kept us waiting about 40 minutes, for a table we had reserved for 8pm. On being seated we ordered hot sake and edamame to nibble on as we perused the menu. First dish out from the kitchen was a seaweed salad beautifully presented inside a cylindrical basket of root vegetable I guess was jicama. The seaweed itself was balanced on top of a bed of regular salad leaves giving the impression the salad was much larger than it really was. It tasted ok. This was follwed by the 'Tofu Napoleon', a layered concoction of crispy tofa and yuba with plum and orange-ginger sauce. The tofu tasted, well, just like tofu but the yuba reminded us of soggy paper and the sauce bizarrely reminded me of pineapple and coca-cola cubes, a British candy we ate when we were kids.
Next the sashimi arrived, exotically balanced on a gourd shell packed with ice and frou-froufery twigs adorning as decoration. The result of the ice was that the fish was too cold. Maybe they were trying to chill out the flavour as the selction of sake, katsuo, maguro, sabe, ama-ebi and hamachi disappointedly tasted far less than fresh. Our final plate was amusingly named "Quack Circus". Surely enough, the 'ring' of fried potato that contained the star performer of duck arranged on a bed of oyster mushrooms and pistachios was entertaining but whilst the miniscule tender pieces of duck were delicious, the mushroom melange was ruined by the nuts which were soggy instead of crispy and therefore tasted stale.

The Summary I reported to Zagat:
Dear Blowfish Sushi: Stop worrying about what your food looks like and pay more attention to the taste! Stunning, exotic, precariously balanced presentations are impressive only until the moment the food passes your lips. Less than fresh fish, stale accompanying ingredients like soft pistachios and old-tasting beets reduced all the other creative efforts to pointless.

Blowfish - Sushi to Die for?