Get your roll on at The Blue Fish in our behind-the-scenes slideshow of the Washington Avenue hand roll hang-out.
Troy Fields
The South Beach Roll is an especially good bet.
Location Info
Details
Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 10:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 11:30 a.m. to
2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to midnight Fridays; 5 p.m. to midnight Saturdays; and 5 to 10:30 p.m. Sundays.
Ahi tower:
$14.95
Chilean sea bass appetizer:
$14.00
Rain forest roll:
$14.95
South beach roll:
$12.95
Kampachi sushi, 2 pieces:
$8.50
Tai sushi, 2 pieces:
$6.95
Sea urchin (uni) sushi, 2 pieces:
$8.95
Live scallop sashimi:
$18
Hamachi sashimi:
$16.50
Super toro sashimi, 5 pieces:
$32
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SLIDESHOW:
Get Your Roll On at The Blue Fish
BLOG POST:
Specialty Rolls and Customer Service Make The Blue Fish a Solid Washington Ave. Destination
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While I was sitting at the sushi bar at Dallas import The Blue Fish, one thing became clear: It's probably not the best seating choice when visiting this fairly new Washington Avenue eatery, which opened last August.
The bar feels truncated, like someone arbitrarily lopped off half of it during construction. While most sushi bars run straight down the length of the chef's sushi station, which occupied the entire east wall, this one was restricted to a corner, so that it felt small even though I was sitting smack-dab in the middle of it.
"We purposely made the bar smaller in Houston because most Houston restaurants have smaller sushi bars," Vlad Fish, The Blue Fish's area manager, explained later. "Our sushi bar in Dallas has many more seats."
While I might be inclined to buy that explanation, there's also the fact that the bar sits low — level with the rest of the tables in the restaurant — so that interaction with the sushi chef is not face to face. Instead, it's awkwardly hindered by a foot of blue-lit wall. When you walk in and see the sushi chefs working intently, heads bent, their chef's whites starkly contrasting against a shiny backdrop of blue-tiled walls adorned with fish, it's almost as if they're just standing there for show.
It kind of makes sense, considering the location of this restaurant, situated as it is on Washington Avenue, an area known more for its club and social scene than for its food. The general ambience and decor are rather club-like, with black partition walls, glowing, blue-lit back lighting, and lightly throbbing techno music.
This is probably not the place for the true sushi aficionado. It's more of a meet-up-with-friends kind of a place than one to have some serious sushi. In hindsight, it was probably naive of me to hope otherwise.
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During that first visit at the sushi bar, I asked the chef for the freshest sushi selections of the day. He pointed to an almaco jack (kampachi), a Japanese red snapper (tai) and the fatty tuna (toro), which he said had just come in five minutes before our arrival.
I turned to the menu to look for appetizers and small plates and quickly became confused. It had three different components: a traditional folded menu listing appetizers and entrées; a single laminated menu which had the roll descriptions without the pricing; and a paper sushi menu with the pricing, where you could mark off your selections.
When you flipped the rolls menu over, there was pricing for sushi and small plates (which were also listed on the folded menu), but again, not the rolls. I found myself flipping the menus back and forth to figure out how much a roll or a piece of sushi would cost. This non-transparent pricing system annoyed me on each of my three visits.
We ended up ordering a couple of appetizers, a specialty roll, the three fish selections suggested by the chef — kampachi and tai sushi and toro sashimi — and a serving of hamachi (yellowtail) sashimi on the belly side, my favorite.
The Ahi Tower, one of the signature appetizers, came out first. The server set down a pretty, tricolored column of rice, avocado, snow crab and sesame-marinated tuna topped with shredded seaweed, then toppled it over, quickly mashing everything up together so that the final plate we received look nothing like the original.
The pinkish-orange, amorphous mound of sticky rice was bland, pasty and starchy, with a not-so-smooth aftertaste. I noticed two of the women at the table of six behind me had ordered the same thing. I don't quite get why it's so popular.
Our Chilean sea bass appetizer was excellent, however, the fish buttery and flaky, slightly charred at the edges in a pleasing way. The blond miso glaze was a little sweeter than I would have liked, but I enjoyed this dish. Likewise, the specialty Rainforest Roll, which had been recommended by the server, was topped with a glistening mixture of spicy tuna and salmon and looked very appetizing. With its crunchy tempura shrimp center, creamy avocado and sweet eel glaze, this roll had all-around appeal. I was happy with the recommendation.
It was not until the sushi and sashimi arrived that things began to falter. Tastewise, the tai was acceptable, but the sushi rice was cold, dry and lacking in flavor where it should have been at body temperature, moist and slightly tangy with the taste of vinegar. The kampachi was not good at all, with a slightly slimy, yet powdery, texture that had me quickly eating some ginger to get rid of it.
The toro sashimi was good enough, but it wasn't the melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness I would have hoped for at $32 for an order of five pieces. And although the hamachi belly sashimi looked good, with a slight pink color indicative of fresh fish, it suffered from the same textural unpleasantness as the kampachi. It had a sort of slimy, powdery mouth-feel, tasting nothing like the slightly sweet hamachi belly that I love. My friend took a bite and wrinkled her nose in distaste.
