Eat Arkansas

Driving through the Heights yesterday, I saw one of the happiest things I've seen in a while, a blue and red flashing OPEN sign in the window of Sushi Cafe. I had been waiting for this place to open, and the day had finally come.

As a celebration for finishing exams, Jay and I decided to try it out. We arrived around 8 and the place was packed. We had to wait for a little while, but given the size of the place and the level of operating experience (turns out this was only the second day they were open), it was pretty expected.

The orange walls and soft lighting are very warm and the interior is pretty metro without being ostentatious or uninviting. In fact, I loved it. As I said, the place is small with not very many tables, but the liquor bar is welcoming and the sushi bar is long. Sushi Cafe also has an extensive cocktails list in case you find you need to wait, and the wine list didn't look too shabby.

I started out with the baby octopus salad, which was well-flavored with just a hint of hotness:

Jay started with a cucumber salad that was a little too vinegary but was refreshing. For an entree he had the beef tatake with a side of fried rice.

I was not furtunate enough to get to taste the beef, but I was assured that it was very good. I did sample the fried rice, however, and it was light enough so as not to be too greasy.

My dinner consisted of the sashimi dinner, with large cuts of fish and other goodies:

Our dinner was pretty healty, in our minds, so we decided we were entitled to dessert. Most everything involves ice cream in some way. We settled on the tempura bananas:

I must say I've never had a fried banana before, but these were pretty tasty. The batter was very light so the bananas weren't super greasy. I also liked them because they weren't just uber sweet. As you can see, it came with mounds of whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I could have done with a little less whipped topping, but hey, when you're having something fried, why not go all out? Other dessert options included fried ice cream and fried cheese cake. The one un-fried dessert option, green tea ice cream, was not available.

Overall the meal was very good. I ran into a buddy who had just finished eating and he said that other than some service kinks, his meal was great. (My buddy's girlfriend said she wanted to come back every day.) The only service kink we had was that our waiter took a while before realizing we were there, but after that the service was very attentive.

The menu has lots of options for non-sushi eaters as well (my friend got a burger). The place was just about cleared out around 9, so I suggest trying it then if you don't want to wait. Sushi Cafe is also open for lunch.