Nanakusa

This is going to be a sketchy review of a very nice, Third Ward restaurant that happens to have a sketchy menu on its web site. I use online menus so I don't have to write down all the details of preparation and prices when I’d rather be savoring new tastes. Well.. Nanakusa’s online menu does not show all of its specials-of-the-day, nor is it detailed enough for me to even figure out which items I ate at the restaurant.

This could also have something to do with my inability to read or speak Japanese. It’s hard to believe that we actually hosted a Japanese exchange student for an entire year back in the late ‘80's. Yukie perfected her already-fluent English, while The Man and I learned konichiwa (good afternoon) and ohio gazimus (good morning). In a whole year. We are SO pathetic.

Before eating at Nanakusa with our friends, Fay and Terry, on Friday night, we attended a classy wine tasting at George Watt’s Tea Room. Put on by Riedel, the manufacturer of skinny-stemmed, expensive, easy-to-break wine glasses, this affair boasted lovely hor deuvers and a pour of four higher-end wines for each of us. Here’s what I learned: 1) that wines actually do not taste as good in what the Riedel guy politely called “Joker Glasses,” but I call Pier One glasses, 2) that it matters which shape glass you use for which wine, 3) that those “balloon” glasses really are the best for chardonnay, and 4) which glass is best for my current favorite varietal, red zinfandel.

Then we were off to the Third Ward. Fortunately, we were able to park right outside the door of Nanakusa on E. Chicago St, as winter (or at least nasty fall) weather has returned to Wisconsin. Nanakusa does not take reservations for parties of fewer than six, but we were seated within ten minutes after arriving at about 7:30 PM. Our table for four was along the windows and graciously separated from other diners.

As we’d consumed an adequate amount of wine before arriving at the restaurant, we delved right into our food selections. Fay, Terry and I decided to share a number of dishes, while the Man Who Could NEVER Choke Down Raw Fish, Even If Stranded On An Island With No Matches, ordered his own meal. The Man chose a vegetable tempura which came with a salad. (When I asked him today about that salad, he said it was especially good because “It had some grated good stuff on the top.” This I found on the online menu. It was ginger. Had he known that, I wonder if he would have even tried it.) The Wild Man also had an appetizer of Gyu Maki ($7.75), made of thin slices of beef wrapped around green onions, then grilled. “That was good,” he said. High praise for any food that is not meat loaf or ring bologna.

The other three of us shared four dishes. First came a dish which I recall might have been called Hotate Sashimi, a plate of thinly sliced raw scallops with the tastiest dollop of wasabi sauce on each slice. They were difficult to pick up with chopsticks, but there’s no way you’d want to eat any of these lovely dishes with a fork.

We wanted to have some tuna and had asked the hostess what dish she’d recommend. We took her suggestion and ordered the Hon Maguro Chu Toro ($11.50), three pieces of very soft, mild, almost bland tuna with two puddles of tasty dipping sauces. This is not like eating sushi from the deli, where you get some soy sauce for dipping. Here each sauce is unique perfection. Then came the salmon with sesame (I think this cost about $13), a generous portion of raw delicious salmon with yummy sesame sauce plated up with two piles of shredded items, one of crisp raw vegetables and the other deep fried oh-so-skinny potatoes. We agreed this was the best item we ordered, though all were very good. Next to arrive at our table was black cod marinated in a miso sauce. It was delicious, however $8 was a bit of a shock for this one-and-a-half-inch serving of fish. And finally we enjoyed several pieces of panko crusted and fried eggplant with a red miso sauce.

Each of the four of us spent a total of about $20 - mighty reasonable for this snazzy restaurant. Of course we’d had wine and appetizers before we came here.

So that’s all for now, friends. Or, as they say in Japan, sayonara. (Okay, so I know one more word. Still – it's pathetic.)

Stirring the Pot