Sushi Jin

Bebout and I returned on a Monday night, sat at the sushi bar and put ourselves in the itamae's hands. The first dish was exquisite; it was a bowl of lightly seared tuna slices in a pool of yuzu sauce topped with white radish sprouts. Yuzu is a tart Japanese citrus fruit that combines beautifully with soy sauce and oil to create a wonderful dipping sauce for sushi dishes. The baby radish crunched as you chewed it, adding a pungent accent.

Next, the sushi master sent us a whole grilled yellowtail fin garnished simply with a couple of lemon wedges. The ­falling-apart, tender bits of meat had to be coaxed out of the nooks and ­crevices of the fin bones with chopsticks, but it tasted sensational with a barest bit of lemon juice squeezed over the top.

"That's my favorite," the sushi man smiled. I suspected that he had given us the piece of the hamachi that he usually reserves for himself.

But by now, we were beginning to wonder why the hell he wasn't making us any sushi. Bebout asked him about various pieces of fish, and he finally agreed to give us some sushi. We sampled some spectacular silky-smooth scallops, some tough and flavorless flounder, some droopy salmon and some awful, watery Alaskan king crab.

For the first time at Sushi Jin, I was disappointed by the raw fish. Suddenly Anthony Bourdain's famous warning from Kitchen Confidential popped into my mind. "I never order fish on Monday," Bourdain wrote. "The fish markets are closed on Saturday and Sunday. Your fish purveyor might deliver on Saturday, but it's stuff they got in on Friday."

I'm not sure when Nakanishi's seafood importing company is open and when their flights come in from Japan, but I suspect they are on the same schedule Bourdain wrote about. Well, it can't stay fresh forever, I guess.

Thank goodness Nakanishi told us to order from the sushi chef. By preparing grilled, dried and seared fish, the itamae managed to serve us a spectacular meal despite the fact that he didn't have much to work with.

Sushi Jin is currently my top choice for classical Japanese sushi in Houston. But I think I'll visit on Tuesdays through Saturdays from now on.