The hunt for great Japanese cuisine in Boston Take 2 - Uni Sashimi Bar

Dissatisfied with our trip to Fugakyu I decided to try another little Japanese sashimi bar I had been hearing quite a bit about. Uni Sashimi Bar in Back Bay is owned by Ken Oringer who has created other great Boston foodie attractions including Toro and KO Prime. The restaurant is conjoined with Oringer's French restaurant, Clio, which I have yet to try. Uni Sashimi Bar is quite small but we didn’t have much problems in making a last minute mid-week reservation.


The décor is a little outdated but the food presentation was definitely not. We were there on a Tuesday which happily coincided with their Tuesday Sapporo Sake Bomb. This included a glass of Sapporo beer with a sake bomb. I’m not really a fan of beer so they were nice enough to change it to two sake shots instead. The alcohol comes with a four course meal (including dessert) all of which is dependent on the chef’s choice and I’m assuming probably also changes from season to season.


For starters we had a lovely sea bass sashimi with fig vinaigrette and masago (tiny sesame-sized puffed rice balls) and pieces of citrus for contrast. This was a very delicate dish with the sourness of the vinegarette and citrus countered by the sweet burst of the masago both complementing the sea bass beautifully.


Our second dish was the salmon sashimi with watemelon radish and daikon pressed in coconut juice and romanesca cauliflower. Again an extremely well assembled plate with the various tones and textures playing off each other.


And finally we finished with shrimp tempura with a red pepper sauce, topped with chives and smoke dried chilli threads. This was the only disappointing dish. I thought the tempura was a bit too oily to taste and the red pepper sauce tasted a bit too much like the sauce used in a spicy sweet and sour pork prepared by the local Chinese takeout.


The dessert drastically brought us back to the initial standards with dark chocolate cremeux, cashew butter, banana ice cream, and golden miso. This blend of dark bitter chocolate, creamy salty butter and miso and sweet ice cream was smooth indulgence delightfully scattered with crunchy bitter cocoa. The dessert is actually made by the Clio restaurant's pastry chef Renae Herzog who sadly is now leaving.

This was a scrumptious feast that we really loved and the prices was also great. Of course they also have an extensive a la carte menu I hope to explore soon.

Sidebar
Food: Modern Japanese
Must try: Sapporo sake bomb Tuesdays!
Setting: Tiny and a bit out dated in deco for the place but not the plating.
Service: Superb.
Damage: $35 per person for the Tuesday special.

Uni Sashimi Bar
Back Bay
370A Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 536-7200

Uni on Urbanspoon

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