Kushi Izakaya & Sushi

Website: http://eatkushi.tumblr.com/
Location: 465 K Street, NW Washington DC 20001
Hours of Operation:

Lunch

Monday - Friday : 11:30 - 2:30
Saturday - Sunday : 12:00 - 2:30
Dinner
Sunday - Thursday : 5:30 - 11:00
Late Night
Friday - Saturday : 11:00 - 1:00
Phone: (202) 682-3123

Introduction
I ate here on a Saturday night on a double date! We did not make reservations. We decided to come here becuase of a Groupon that we had and it was going to expire. There is a parking lot right across the restaurant, $5.00 to park as long as you want, and street parking. On a side note, the parking lot was pretty packed. As you walk in, there is a big curtain that you have to walk through. Once, inside, the pack is packed. There are many people standing on the side waiting for tables. You can tell, at a place so packed, you know its a good place to eat at. Instead of waiting for a table, my group sat at the bar. You can actually order off the full menu at the bar.

Food
The menu consists of sushi, sashimi, charcoal grill foods and grilled skewers. This place is a Japanese restaurant, so remember its not ALL sushi.  They have happy hour specials, which had a few items at a great deal! As a group, we ordered a few rolls and sashimi. In addition, it seemed like the skewers were popular. We ordered yakionigiri, which is a grilled rice ball that has this type of plum inside. The rice balls were off the happy hour menu, which ended shortly after we arrived. On top of that, we also ordered: buta bara/pork belly  and butter poached lobster tail skewer, ikura/salmon roe nigiri, tuna and cucumber maki and a few other items as well. (Sorry I don't quite remember everything!) The skewers are basically about 2-3 pieces of what ever you choose grilled. Yes the skewer is very tasty and perfectly grilled, but the price is a bit unreasonable. I could definitely tell that the ikura and the sushi fish were fresh. Each maki consists of six pieces. The sushi were all served with fresh grated wasabi horseradish. This was definitely a unique touch to this restaurant. Once you have real wasabi, you would never want to go back to the imitation wasabi.

Service
The two bartenders serviced us, since we sat at the bar. It's a small world, becuase talking to the bartender, one of the guys in the group turned out to have mutual friends with one of the bartender. They were really helpful in choosing what to eat and even made a few recommendations. They were always on top of things and provided great service. After we almost finished the food that we have ordered, she gave us a small dish on the house: charcoal grill Japanese eggplant. It was hot and delicious!

Overall
In all and all, the food was delish. However, I would say the downfalls of this restaurant is the quantity for the price. This place is extremely pricey, that's one reason why we ate here with a Groupon! The quality of the food and the service of the bartender is extraordinary and high end. I rate this restaurant a 3.5 out of 5 stars. The food was great, but what really killed a star and a half is looking at the charges on our tabs...I would probably come back, but only if I had another Groupon.

Pork belly and butter-poached lobster skwers

Charcoal grilled Japanese eggplant

Maggiano's Little Italy - Tyson's Corner

Intro
I went here excatly a week and one day ago! I went here for a double date to celebrate an early Valentine's lunch. Our reservations were for 4:30 PM on that Saturday. That was the ONLY date avaiable after calling in a week ahead. Anywho, we got to the resturant and there was a massiave amount of people waiting around the front desk. We checked in for our reservaation and was asked to wait on the side. Walkign away from the front desk, I overheard the wait time was 2 to 2 and a half hour. Luckily for us, we had a reservation. Waiting on the side was like standing in the middle of the road of a busy market...seriously, we had to constantly move out of the way for servers, food-runners and others passing by.After about 20 minute wait, we were sat down at our table. We actually had two waiters who were going to service us. We all decide on doing the Family Style - Classic, which was only avaible for parties of 4 or more. It inculded two appetizers, two salads, four main course selections and two desserts. Family style is basically all-you-can-eat on the items you order, you just have to ask for more!

Appetizer: Mushroom Ravioli al Forno, Calamari Fritté
The calamari was the typical calamari dish that you would find at any other italian resturants. Ours was garnished with a very tiny lemon. We actually asked for another lemon, but our server never remembered to bring it to us. The calamari was crispy and hot. Like I said, tt was just the basic calamari that you can get anywhere. The Mushroom Ravioli was DA BOMB! It was hot and delicious. We had to ask for seconds of this! The ravioli had dicled mushrooms with a white cream inside of it. The cream was also generously drizzled on top. I don't know how else to explain this ravioli, but it was perfect.

Salad:  Caesar, Spinach
The Caesar salad was your typical traditional Caesar salad, with romaine lettuce, croutons, Parmesan cheese and  the Caesar dressing. The Spinach salad consists of spinach, slices of red peppers, red onions and Gorgonzola cheese, bacon and toasted pine nuts. It had an apple vinaigrette. With disappointment, there were barely pieces of red peppers, red onions and bacon. It had CHUNKS of Gorgonzola cheese. Actually, now come to think about it, there were no bacon at all. Apart from the deceiving description on the menu, the spinach salad also had to be self-tossed. It was a bit of a disappointment.

Entree: Chicken & Truffle Tortellacci, Grilled Salmon Lemon & Herb, Herb-Roasted Chicken, Mom’s Lasagna
The chicken and truffle tortellacci was just like the ravioli. Maybe my review is a bit bias, but this was definitely one of the best choices of our late-lunch. The grilled salmon was cooked jsut right. The salmon filet was a bit small, but it was good. It had a clean taste, garlic and white wine sauce, but nothing was too special about it. It wasn't actually grilled. If anything, it felt like it was steamed, but this could be just the piece that I got.The herb-roasted chicken sat on a bed of spinach and was garnished with capers. Capers and chicken is a tasty mix. The chicken pieces are served already-cut, so it was easy to get and eat. The mom's lasagna was the typical everything you think of when you think of mom's lasagna: ground meats, pasta sheet layers, ricotta cheese and the cheesy-goodness of Provolone on top! It was to die for. We got a second-serving of this.

Dessert: Tiramisu, New York Style Cheesecake
Each slice of dessert was a huge slice! The tiramisu was decent. It didnt have anything particularly great about it. Personally, I would have loved if its recipe called for more coffee and stronger coffee. The New York style cheesecake was topped with whipped cream, a mint leave and on the side there was a berry sauce with blue berries. The blueberries looked out of place on the plate. We were given two plates of each dessert, on one plate of the cheesecake, there was only about 4 blueberries and the other had about 8 blueberries. The cheesecake was average as well. Nothing wow about the dessert.

Overall
I would rate this particular restaurant 1.5 out of 5 stars. The food was overall average. The service was a below average. We had to wait around a couple times to find our waiters, to refill our water. We also ordered Italian Orange Soda, but nothing was good about that, I just tasted like orange soda with club soda. Beware, refills here are not free either. My boyfriend ordered a mojito, it was nasty. There was no sugar at all and it was just plain BLEH. He asked the waiter for sugar. It seemed like the waiters that were servicing us were constantly dropped things. During the 2 hours we were there, they dropped a plate, knifes, bottle opener. One of the waiter came by and asked how we were doing, and it seemed like there was either a blood or tomato sauce smudged across his shirt...let's just go with tomato sauce. It wasn't a small mess, if anything it was really noticeable. Personally, I wouldn't recommend anyone to come here to eat, unless you are extremely craving Italian food, especially ravioli and the tortellaci. Otherwise, you would probably die waiting for a table, unless you made reservations. I probably would not come back to this particular location either, it was packed, there was nothing so special.

Matuba Restaurant

On the past Friday around 1:00PM, I went to have lunch at Matuba Restaurant with my boyfriend, which is located at 4918 Cordell Avenue Bethesda, MD. This wasn't my first time going, it actually is probably my fourth or fifth time eating here. Each time I come to Matuba, I am there for the rotary buffet, which is located in the back of the restaurant. For lunch (11:30AM-1:45PM) during the weekdays, the price is $13.50 a person. After fighting for parking in the nearby Montgomery County garage. I headed to meet my boyfriend inside.

You pay upfront first, of course, my sweetheart already covered that even before I walked in! Then, the hostess tells you to head up the stairs, walk across the small hall and to the back. Once in the back, you are to walk down the stairs and wait to be seating. Unfortunately waiting for a seat wasn't the greatest experience, the rotary bar has seats all around the bar as well as tables- for-four that connect to the bar on the right hand side. The tables-for-four had two tables that were empty, however, the waitress was hesitant to sit us there. We ended up waiting for about 5 minutes till we were seated and the place wasn't that crowded. For that 5 minutes, the waitress cleared off the tables-for-four and by that time, a couple and a single diner got up and left. They were sitting around the bar. Finally, after she ran over to clean that space up, set up napkins, chopsticks, wasabi and ginger we were seated there.

The appearance of the backroom/rotary buffet room, is quite simple. I actually don't remember anything special about it. Apart from the white walls, and papers taped to the wall, I am guessing all eyes are on the rotary bar! I did notice, one of the paper advertisements stated that they will begin opening the rotary bar buffet for dinner on Thursdays! The dress code is casual, but you will find people dressed up, I am guessing they are people who work nearby grabbing lunch here.

After waiting to be seating we quickly started grabbing food off the rotary belt. I guess that is what draws people to this place, just the fact that they have a rotary bar. There are various items that are on the belt, from sushi, sushi rolls, hand rolls, hot foods, salads, fruits and edamame. If you look off the Matuba website, you can find a total of 26 items. Looking at that list, I would have to honestly say that the bar only had about 12-13 of those items listed. That was disappointing. Each plate that had rolls, had a total of 3 pieces. The nigiri plates had 2 pieces. Remember, this is a buffet, so you could have 100 plates of the rolls if you wished! The sushi rolls are average. Almost all of the usual rolls that you can get in Japanese restaurants are all available here, such as tuna roll, Salmon/Avocado roll, eel roll, California roll..etc. The chef also made hand rolls, we had eel hand rolls and spicy tuna hand rolls. There is a good balance for those who don't eat raw fish too! As for hot foods tempura, chicken teriyaki and gyozas were fresh and hot! The waitress had to bring these out from the kitchen and place them on the belt, of course! Every so often, she brought out fruit plates, that consisted of a slice of orange, honeydew and cantaloupe.

In the middle of the rotary belt, there was a sushi chef of course. He was very friendly and nice. Apart from just standing there and making the sushi, he checked on everyone sitting around him asking us if we were enjoying and if we would like to request anything. In addition, when he made new rolls for the belt, he would frequently ask if we wanted it and directly hand the plates to us.

All and all,  I would give the restaurant 2 stars out of 5. In the past, there was a most extensive selection on the rotary belt, reflecting what the website lists. I believe, during dinner, there would be the full selection... The waitress was odd for not sitting us down as soon as possible. Actually, I feel that she wouldn't sit us in the tables-for-four becuase she was saving it for more...hefty people, who later walked in. The sushi chef was polite and great. The quality of the foods were average and, not taking the amount of varieties that there was into hand, the quality of the food here is just the way I remembered it to be each time I ate here. Would I come back? Yes, if I was ever in Bethesda and have a major craving for sushi, I would. Also for the price, its a deal, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat here. There are better sushi buffets out there ~ But remember, this review is only on the buffet portion of the restaurant, I have not yet actually sit down at the "restaurant" part of Matuba.

First post...?

I don't know what to post for my first blog posting so....

 

isn't it cute?