#CHIRASHI HOUSTON SKIN#

'I took it off because I had to wash some dishes,' Nakanishi said. 'If you're an Aggie, where's your class ring?' Bebout challenged him. As luck would have it, he went to A&M, too. He must have overhead the conversation, because he came over to our table and introduced himself. But somehow they had all kinds of things to talk about, like dorm number three and dorm number seven, and all that inane Aggie blah-blah-blah.Īs it happened, the restaurant's owner, Bill Nakanishi, was seated at the booth right behind us. The girl had graduated from Texas A&M in the last few years Bebout, on the other hand, left the place several decades ago. We were discussing the unusual way the yellowtail was cut when Bebout noticed our cute young Asian waitress was wearing an Aggie class ring. Bebout and I kept smacking our lips over the stuff.

#CHIRASHI HOUSTON SKIN#

The pieces of hamachi, as yellowtail is known in Japanese, had faint traces of fish skin along one edge that seemed to accentuate the incredible flavor. Which is why my sushi-eating buddy John Bebout and I returned for dinner a few Fridays later and ended up searching for new adjectives over a bowl of the best yellowtail sashimi I have ever eaten in Houston. The quality of all the fish we were served on that visit was noticeably better than what we were used to getting in Houston sushi bars. The white stripes of fat in the salmon were so wide, it looked like an orange-and-white candy cane. At Sushi Jin, the chirashi was just a lot of pieces of sashimi leaning against each other in a ceramic bowl.īut oh, what slices of sashimi. At Kubo, the chirashi is a landscape in three lacquered boxes. But the aesthetic of positioning the fish is akin to flower arranging.Īt first I was disappointed, because the presentation at Sushi Jin was nothing special. It is actually the simplest of all sushi dishes, because it's just pieces of sashimi (traditionally nine kinds) spread on a bed of rice. I had chirashi sushi, or 'scattered sushi.' This dish is my favorite measure of a sushi chef. My first visit was for lunch on a Friday.

I've already said the fish at other sushi places around town was fresh, really fresh and really, really, bright-and-shiny fresh, so now what do I say? The challenge in reviewing Sushi Jin, the stellar Japanese restaurant on Memorial at Dairy Ashford, is finding new adjectives to describe how fresh the fish is.

Chirashi houston