![]() ![]() “I think we’ve all had a bad experience with uni,” I say. “I don’t know about this one,” he says nervously. One evening at dinner, we’re presented with sea urchin roe, and the guy I’m with balks. The quick blast of fire has caramelized the fish without fully cooking it, and as I pop it into it my mouth, I bite into a delicate, unexpected crunch of gray sea salt. ![]() But before we can ask, we realize the dish is intended for us. “I don’t know what he’s making, but we should ask for some of that,” my friend says, reading my mind. The air in front of us gushes with the scent of cotton candy. One day I’m sitting at the counter with a friend and we’re watching as the chef douses a couple of pieces of … something, we can’t tell what, with soy sauce and places them into a cast-iron pan and then sets the pan ablaze. I’ve tasted bluefin tuna belly that melts on my tongue even before I begin to chew. I’ve marveled over raw scallops that, if I had tasted them with my eyes shut, I would have sworn I was eating butter. I’ve returned for the omakase and enjoyed slight variations each time. Purplish slivers of kanpachi arrive topped with yuzu kosho, a paste-like chutney made of sour citrus zest and green chilies. It’s the ultimate contrast, the sensuality of the flesh playing against the brutal decadence of the hot, crunchy heads filled with creamy tomalley. And just as we’ve devoured the tails, the heads arrive deep-fried to a crisp, their big black eyeballs staring blankly through a thin layer of tempura. ![]() The taste is clean and sweet and fatty all at once. Undressed and completely naked, every supple curve and indention of the flesh is stunning, almost like looking at a grapefruit segment that’s been removed from its casing. The tails of live sweet shrimp are stripped of their protective armor and glazed with a fine gossamer of soy. It is topped with pickled scallion and ginger and a single brushstroke of soy sauce, and I cannot imagine a more perfect bite. Sushi murasaki santa ana skin#As I bring the plate toward me, the mackerel’s iridescent skin shimmers between silver and blue, like one of those pictures that changes shapes depending on the angle at which you view it. “Aji,” says the chef as he’s handing over another piece of nigiri. The sea bass has a more pronounced salinity than the halibut. Although the tables around the dining room are set with soy sauce, there isn’t a single bottle at the sushi counter. Everything handed to me is meant to be consumed within seconds exactly as it is. The idea is that I’m not supposed to dip anything into soy sauce or muck anything up with wasabi. It’s topped with a few drops of what I presume might be shishito pepper oil. Next up is sea bass, a pinkish pearl essence of flesh, delicately crosshatched with a dozen meticulous knife marks. It tastes like fresh tears, and with this one bite, I know I’m in for an extraordinary ride. It’s the perfect size for a single, civilized mouthful. It’s topped with a single fleck of orange and red relish of some sort. The flesh is vaguely translucent on one end, fading to an opaque white on the other. The glistening sliver of halibut clings to an equally proportioned lump of rice. “Halibut fin,” the chef says, timidly, handing two small plates across the counter, each sporting a single piece of nigiri sushi. Almost immediately after this, the first course arrives. “Pickled” is perhaps too strong of a word for these cucumbers, though, which taste not of vinegar but of sake. It’s a bowl of lightly pickled cucumber slices. Within seconds of our sitting down, the first dish arrives. “The counter is for omakase only,” she says, apologetically. The hostess gives us one of those polite little bows. “Can we sit there?” I ask, pointing to the counter. When I originally stop in for lunch, the dining room is thronged, yet strangely no one is sitting at the sushi counter. Omakase is a simple word with a rather profound meaning that humbly translates to, “I trust and respect you. Omakase is that tradition of putting yourself in the hands of the sushi chef, letting him prepare whatever he desires. Before I stumbled upon Sushi Murasaki, I had been making my rounds among the county’s top-rated sushi restaurants for months, hoping to find a truly memorable omakase. ![]()
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