Fun With Carbs

Amazing Tuna, or American Tango?

This was meant to be a straightforward blog entry/review of our Saturday night visit to Osaka in Northampton. Osaka is hands-down one of the best sushi restaurants in the area, and it’s always a treat to eat there. But through one small misstep, my husband and I were served a sushi roll that contained each of our most reviled foods. What are the odds?

Osaka has a great lineup of special rolls, sushi creations with all kinds of exotic and interesting ingredients. They also have a ‘Japanese-French fusion’ menu where they meld things like tuna and jalapeno salsa, yellowtail seviche with kiwi and grapefruit juice and lobster with apple and mango. Pretty funky, avant-garde stuff, which we gravitate toward anyway. From this menu, we chose the ‘half-and-half’ roll (spicy tuna topped with half-avocado, half-sliced mango, topped with a sweet chili sauce) and the ‘Amazing Tuna’ roll (white tuna tempura, spicy tuna, cucumber topped with black pepper tuna and spicy mango and eel sauce.)

Chicken negimaki

We began with an unusual appetizer of chicken negimaki, crispy white meat wrapped around chunky vegetables (carrot, asparagus and some kind of leafy green) and melty American cheese. It was a cross between a spring roll, chicken pot pie and chicken cordon bleu, we decided. Then they served Rob’s nigiri appetizer (the freshest he’s ever had, he declared) and two more traditional sushi rolls, ebi tempura and spicy scallop. Both were well-constructed and delicious. I also had two glasses of this fabulous Montevina sauvignon blanc, which was clean and crisp with a distinct green-apple flavor.

The bizarro-world moment came when our fusion dishes arrived and Rob snatched a piece of the ‘Amazing Tuna’ roll, took a bite and went pale. “There’s goat cheese in this,” he said, alarmed.

Me: “No, there isn’t.”
Him: “YES, THERE IS.”

And upon further review, yes, there was. I’m a big fan of goat cheese, so I took over responsibility for eating the remainder of the roll. It had seared tuna, avocado and an unidentifiable tempura-fried topper. So we’d gotten the wrong thing, but it still tasted pretty good. No big deal, right?

I checked Osaka’s online menu this morning and surmised that we’d been given the ‘American Tango’ roll instead of the ‘Amazing Tuna.’ This consisted of pan-seared tuna, goat cheese, avocado, cucumber and a strawberry balsamic sauce. Topped with TEMPURA-FRIED SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS.

Let’s recap. Goat cheese makes my husband want to claw his tongue out. I consider mushrooms to be the personification of all evil in this world. Both of our edible nemeses rolled up into one sushi dish.

Other than that, good meal…

Osaka Japanese Restaurant on Urbanspoon