Machi Sushi

There's a new All You Can Eat Sushi's place.

I know what you're thinking...

All You Can Eat Sushi??? Very Questionable.

No no, this is not buffet style, no sushi has been sitting here for hours waiting for someone to pick it up.  They are all made to order. 

The top was Pepper Tuna Tataki and the bottom one is Beef Tataki.  Pretty fresh and tasty.

Baked Mussels - that's actually pretty good. 

The top is Takoyaki and the bottom is Fried Tofu (agedashi) with Ponzi sauce. 

Left to Right: Eel, Spicy Salmon, and Tuna.

I saw this and cannot help myself, this is a grilled octopus.  This is yakitori, where they grill it and sauced.

We got Yellowtail, White Tuna, and Salmon sashimi.

Spicy Tuna Roll

Giant Vegetable Tempura

The Top was Tempura Vanilla Ice Cream, the bottom is Tempura Banana. 

The staff were friendly here, they do come back to check back a little too often though.  And it is all you can order.  Also grateful the orders are on the smaller side because it lets you order a variety of food.  The only thing are the rolls, they are the full regular size, cut to 8 pieces.

The dinner pricing is free for kids age 1-3, $17.98 for kids 4-7, and $24.95 for kids 8-11, and $35.95 for 12 -adults.   I think lunch has different pricing.  There's also drink specials for Happy Hour too. 

There's plenty of parking but since it's on Washington, it does get busy in the area. 

Machi Sushi

5820 Washington Ave

Ste 200

Houston, TX 77007

346-320-3936

https://www.machisushihouston.com/

 

Aburi Sushi

We went back to Aburi for Social Hour/Dinner

Social Hour is from 5-7p from Monday - Friday.  They do have it from 3-6p on Saturdays too.

I had a mocktail mule, which has lime, ginger beer and something spicy because it has a pepper in there. 

For Social Hours, we could not resist truffle fries... it comes with aioli sauce.

Their House Seaweed Salad - it has seaweed, beets (red and gold ones), cucumber and sesame.  Definitely very colorful.  

Hamachi Crudo, turns out Social Hour only comes with 3 slices, so order accordingly.  It has Hamachi (amberjack), Thai chili, onion, cilantro, and coconut yuzu sauce.  Pretty good flavor. 

Ahi Tower, which is really tuna tataki and they give you slices of toasted bread to go with it.  Pretty good, but Social Hour size again is smaller than we thought. 

This is Scallop and Foie Gras - it's pretty good, not super rich.  Thought I'd like more flavor to the foie gras.

I believe this is the Madai - forgot to write it down.

I got the spicy salmon roll, Uni from Hokkaido, Tuna, and seared salmon.

For dessert, we splatted the Oreo Chocolate Mousse dish.  For a chocolate lover, this one kinda under deliver. I don't need it to be super sweet, but would love to have more layers on the flavors for sure. 

This is Mango Panna Cotta.  It has coconut panna cotta with chunks of mango and wakamomo (green peach).  Wakamomo are baby unriped peach from Japan, and it looks like an olive, but the flavor is a cross between plum, muscat grape and a hint of peach.  I'm not typically a panna cotta fan,  but this is a hit for the table.  The texture is right, the flavor hit all the right notes. We were devouring this one.

So this is a good restaurant, and if you want to walk-in, it's do-able.  But if your party have 5 or more, a reservation is highly recommended.  When we were here for a week night, the entire place is fully seated.  Sadly, we only see 2 servers for the entire dining area.  While our server is friendly and super on top of our dishes and what's left coming out, applauds to that server.  It was also hard to flag him down.  So hopefully that gets better over time.  

Aburi Sushi

3800 Southwest Fwy

Ste 104

Houston, TX 77027

346-701-7953

https://www.aburihtx.com/

 

Kimono

Went inside Swan Hotel on Disney Property to have dinner.

Technically Swan belongs to the Marriott group, but they are on the property, and can take advantage of the Magic Hour. And some rooms can see the fire works at Magic Kingdom.

To start, I got the seaweed salad. It came with some pickled cucumber, but what is hidden is crab meat.  It's underneath the greens.  Very light in flavor.

We also split some gyoza. 

Then here's our goodies.  Top clockwise: 2 Tamago (egg), Tuna, Salmon, Yellowtail, Shrimp, and Unagi.

Fish is fresh, service is quick and the staff are all super nice.  This is one that I like coming back to. 

Kimono

inside Swan Hotel

1200 Epcot Road

Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830

https://swandolphin.com/dining/kimonos/ 

 

Doko

Yesterday I talked but Bar Doko.  Once you done your happy hour,...

... just conveniently walk across to have a full meal. 

Clean and sleek designs.

I got the Nisemono Highball, it's Peach bitters with sparkling ciders.  On the top is candied Shiso, which is a Japanese leaf it's a herb from the mint family.  It's a fun candy to try.

Love the details - it's the origami crane to hold your chopsticks. 

First course, we got the Masu Crudo - that's Cherry Trout in Japanese. it has Serrano pepper, Furikake seasoning, a bit of Vietnamese fish sauce, and bits of orange. 

Got a plate of shishito pepper, grilled, togarashi seasoning, shaving of smoked skipjack tuna on top.  I was enjoying it, but bit into a super hot one by accident.... gulp gulp on the water. 

I got the chef's nigiri 4pc - it has Masu, Yellowtail, Blue Fin Tuna, and Madai.  Super fresh and delicious. 

This is mushroom nigiri - it has a unique texture, it's harder in texture than the mushroom we are used to. 

This is the Negitoro Roll - it has Blue Fin tuna, chives, cucumber, and Kaluga caviar on top.  It has alot packed into a little bite.  This is definitely a must-get!

This is the Kawa Skewers - chicken skin.  The texture was harder than I thought. 

Of course, cannot miss the Pork Belly with wasabi mustard.  That's a must-order too.  Very delicious. 

This is Tebasaki - this is an interesting dish.  If you imagine like a chicken wing - no bone, except inside is stuffed with fat cooked rice and fried.  You dip it into aioli sauce.  That's totally make the dish.  It was alot of food by this point, even though they're all small dishes.  So it's easy to fill it all up. 

Doko

3737 Cogdell St

Ste 145

Houston, TX 77019

713-505-1282

https://www.sushidoko.com/

 

Kaisen Sushi HTX

An article was comparing Kaisen to Oru so I got curious and conducted my own test.

It's inside Blosgett Food Hall.  Not having been here, it was my first visit here.

There's nobody works here, there's a giant window that the kitchen can look out, but otherwise, there's a wall of locker.

I place my order on their website, and I got a text message on the status of my order.  Once I arrive, my order sent a text with a QR code and you scan it to a tablet by the wall and the locker opens. 

There's some seating inside and some outside.  So I just grabbed a seat and checked out my goodies.

They did a great job packaging it.  The bag is insulated and cute design because not only does it have sturdy handle, they have a fold over tab to keep the food cold.

The nice part is that they have an ice pack, so that was nice and thoughtful. 

This is the omakase bento set A - It comes with 4 pieces of nigiri - there's Buri, Salmon, Tuna, and not sure what the other one was.  Then there's 2 pieces of Inari AND 2 pieces of sashimi.  To be honest, that's pretty filling, not to mention the fish is fresh and tasty.  So the roll really put me over.  That being said, that is also the best damn roll I've ever tasted.  I'm not typically a roll person, but for convenient sake, I do.  But out of all the rolls, that's the best one yet.  All that for $30

Then I got an Unagi Roll.  I didn't know what to expect to be honest since the roll from the bento was really good, this can go either way.  They had your usual unagi (eel) with avocado, inside out style with panko bits to give it more texture.  I love how they go you fresh ginger and soy sauce.  Of course the wasabi is tubed.

First off, don't worry I did not eat all of that in one sitting.  Second, I didn't know what to expect from Blodgett Food Hall, they have a whole array of food offerings, but didn't realized the set up is like this.  It's neat, it's futuristic, but if you decided to eat it there, and got thirsty, guess what, they don't even have a vending machine on site.  So you'll have to start an order all over to get a drink.  They did make me feel better that they have ice pack in the bag to keep the food cold, depends on how far you're going to take the food, may not be a bad idea to bring a couple more just in case. 

Kaisen Sushi

https://www.kaisenhtx.com/

 

Oru

Has been looking forward to try Oru and so excited to come here. 

The restaurant sits in a 1940s home where they restored. 

This is a 24- seats counter.  The only difference is that they have a rolling dining time, instead of specific seating times. 

I got the Grape Spritz - it has green grape, jasmine tea for flavor and soda.  It's not too sweet and it's kinda nice. 

This is Trout Roe Service.  it's super cute.  It has a play of roe, hay smoked butter, and taiyaki.  Growing up taiyaki usually have fillings in the middle, but these are all waffles.  So treat it like bread, open it up, get some butter and top it with some roe.  It's pretty delicious. 

Sorry, just one more pic of the fishies, they are too cute.

This is the Nibitasu Salad, which has eggplant, tomato, and crispy shrimp leg.  The crispy added texture so the dish is not all mushy.  But the sauce that accompanies it is pretty decent. 

This is Tofu Karrage - the sauce on top was pretty good. 

This is Waygu Lumpia - it has a thinly sliced waygu wrapped around crispy egg roll fried with tallow.  I will say, as much as I've heard about this dish, it was underwhelming.  I like the creativeness of it, but the flavor is lacking, even with it cooked in tallow.  That was a bummer.  

This is Chawamushi - sadly, the temp was too lukewarm and the roe was too cold, so the temp lost me there.  Then, the texture of the egg custard is too undercooked, it's too mushy.  So even thought they have delicious mushroom inside, it was just not doing it for me. 

For Nigiri: we got Hotate (scallop) very good texture and lemony.  Then Madai (R), it was a tad chewy.

Sawara - King Mackerel - it's so good that it melts in your mouth, there's a little crispy bits in there too.  So good.  The other is Otoro - fatty tuna, which you cannot go wrong with that.

Here we have chef showing off the Uni.  

These are from Maine, which has a cleaner flavor, very similar to Hokkaido kind. 

Here's another check showing off their hand rolls

It was Masaba - which is Japanese Mackerel, the smell was good, but the temp was too cool for my liking.

This is Seared Barracuda - never had it before.  Not my fav but I tried it. 

This is Uni Okoge, which has Uni, confit pearl onion, rice porridge.  The rice has a texture of risotto, and it does taste like cheese, but it's actually that is from uni butter.  The onion here is not my jam, but the uni butter rice is pretty good. 

For dessert, we have: Banana Caviar - the caviar made it a tad salty, but the ice cream does taste legit real banana.

This is the Coconut Sorbet - This is the best one that the entire group agreed on.  It has a hint of mint, but they scraped the inside of a coconut and made ice cream out of it.  And it's true, every bite tasted like real coconut. 

For desserts, the fishes made a re-appearance.  Again, the Taiyaki doesn't have filling.  Because you're suppose to dig into the cup to get the filling.

The cup has crispy rice, Nutella, and strawberry jam at the bottom.  I guess you can dig into the depth and grab all 3 flavors together and smear it over the waffle.  But honestly, all I needed was the Nutella and I can do without the other layers.

I enjoyed the service, everyone there were exceptional, very knowledgeable about the dishes and can explain the food.  Watching the sushi chef work their magic is always fun.  The place is very clean cut, but so much so that the sound system is echo-y that wasn a tad of a bummer can't hear each other, but can hear folks across loud and clear.  I do appreciate the rolling seating unlike Neo which has designated seating times.

Anyway, the place only has 24 seats, obviously you should make a reso.  Can you do walk in?  Yes, there's a small 'bar' area that try to accommodate, but don't count on that.  Parking is tight, the lot is small, but do-able.  The good thing is since the dining time is rolling, you can easily find a spot as people are coming and going.  I will say, our dinner was at 6:30p, kinda busy, but by 8:30p either folks are near done eating, or it's well underway.  There's no line waiting on a. weekend night that we were there.  So you can definitely do a progressive crawl and end here.

Oru

746 W. 24th Street

Houston, TX 

https://www.commahospitality.com/oru/

https://www.instagram.com/oruhtx/