You could get sushi in Ballard before: inexpensive sushi,

usually described as “okay,” at the unfancy Bento Sushi and Sam’s
Sushi Bar & Grill. But Ballard is no longer inexpensive, “okay” is no longer okay, and, in an evolutionary quantum leap,
three fancy new sushi bars have opened in Ballard in the last five
minutes. Two of them are on the same block. All three are quite good;
while I didn’t locate any reality-bending bites of sheer sushi bliss,
none of them would be out of place in Belltown. Which one is right for
you? Depends on what you like.

Do you like pretty trees? How about cartoons? Do you like smoking
marijuana? This last preference is not a prerequisite; it’s just that
Moshi Moshi Sushi (5324 Ballard Ave NW, 971-7424), or
The Place with the Tree, is self-evidently an
especially good place for your highness. The airy, two-
story-tall
space buzzes with collective happy sushi-eating excitement while
simultaneously projecting tranquility—e.g., a few Japanese paper
parasols hung on a celadon wall. The Tree, at the center of the room,
is also two stories tall, and it is covered in tiny pink fabric cherry
blossoms, and each one is illuminated by a tiny LED, and these tiny
LEDs emit light on a magical hypnotic wavelength. Furthermore, “Moshi
Moshi Sushi” means “Hello Sushi.” Stare up at the Tree, murmuring
“Moshi Moshi!” in your mind, and you are in an anime fairy tale.

At Moshi Moshi, the fish is fresh, handled with care, and not
subjected to too much elaboration. The rice is pleasantly on the
slightly vinegary side; cuts of fish for nigiri are long and thick. The
head sushi chef, Kotaro Kumita, trained with traditionalist Shiro,
whose Belltown sushi bar is considered by many to be the best in town.
(Before that, Kumita spent time behind the bar at Hana on Broadway,
considered by many to be just all right, but really cheap.) If you like
to sit at the bar, Kumita and his colleague are a pleasure to watch
work, and they’ll answer whatever questions you might have. Meanwhile,
the floor servers devote themselves to maniacal
beverage-
monitoring and removal of empty dishes. In the latter
capacity, they say each and every time, “I’ll clear this plate for you”
or “Can I get this out of your way?” It’s not a hate crime, but a
little silent efficiency would not be amiss. In other minor quibbles:
The dark wood chairs and bar stools do not match the blond benches, bar
top, and other accent woodwork, which gives a cut-rate effect, which
Moshi Moshi’s prices are not. But! Cocktails are taken seriously here,
with delicious-sounding drinks made by a barman imported from San
Francisco’s Slanted Door. (Tree appreciation also doubtless increases
while sipping an Angel’s Share.) In final noteworthiness: Happy hour,
both early and later-night, has inexpensive drinks, sake, tempura, and
various rolls—if I lived nearby, I’d be there for it and the Tree
at least once a week.

Do you like fedoras? Are you fond of mayonnaise and fried-ness? What
about special-action toilets? While it’s true that it doesn’t sound
very appetizing, Shiku Sushi (a few doors south of
M.M. at 5310 Ballard Ave NW, 588-2151) must be known as The
Place with the Toilet, as its most-talked-about feature is a
TOTO-brand commode imported from Japan. The Toilet has many buttons,
which activate functions involving surprising jets of water, which are
delivered to areas not accustomed in this country to such visitations.
Also, there is drying by way of warm air. It’s, um, interesting but
time-consuming; on a busy night, the ladies’ room line could get
daunting.

Also much-mentioned with regard to Shiku: the fedora-wearing staff,
whose headwear is meant to complement the dim, sleek urbane atmosphere.
Only one fellow, head sushi chef Johnny Kim, was thus haberdashed on my
visit (a disappointment, even though the gimmick is silly). Given
Shiku’s mod/noir elegance, the laminated flip charts with color photos
of the specialty rolls are incongruous, as is the
mark-a-list-with-a-pencil style of
sushi ordering. This is a
low-rent system;
they do this at Hana. Yet you’re paying upmarket
prices for your seat at Shiku. And it’s a
particular letdown if
you like sitting at the bar, where the piece-of-paper go-between
discourages interaction. Then when Kim was asked why the Homeless roll
was named that, he said he was too slammed to answer and it’d have to
wait. (The eventual reason: “It’s so good, you’ll get addicted right
away and won’t want to cook at home anymore.”)

The Homeless roll involves jumbo-shrimp tempura and avocado topped
with a hillock of soft-shell crab mixture drenched (their word, and an
accurate one) with spicy mayo, then drizzled with that sweet,
teriyaki-style unagi sauce. In general, mayo and tempura and
squeeze-bottled sauces and gigantic-roll format are favored here; if
that’s your thing, you’ll be in hog heaven. (The dark booths would also
be perfect for stuffing big pieces of roll into each other’s maws, all
romantic-
like.) Shiku’s nigiri has smaller pads of rice than
usual; one piece of fish had a ragged edge. And while service was
generally attentive, an order of miso soup got forgotten. (There’s a
happy hour here, too; you could hit both Shiku and Moshi Moshi, and see
for yourself.)

Do you like hearty greetings? How about nice families? Does the
quality of genuineness please you? O’shan Sushi (5809
24th Ave NW, 420-3737), or The Place of the Sparkly
Tie, is located in the former Austin Cantina space, much
smaller than the other two. While it’s not without contemporary
decorative charm—in paticular, a backlit screen on one
wall—O’shan feels less forcibly high- or low-wattage, overall
lower-key. (As are the prices; each nigiri pair is $1 to $1.50 less
here.)

It’s a family affair: One night last week, the owner’s father was
behind the sushi bar, welcoming everyone as they came in. His best
friend was lodged at one end, visiting, eating, and wearing a tie that
was somehow both sparkly and tastefully elegant. Other bar-
sitters
were introduced to Sparkly Tie; exchange of pleasantries ensued. The
unendingly nice server turned out to be the owner’s sister, and when
her dad tried to give her a caterpillar roll that didn’t have
salmon-roe eyeballs and shrimp antennae, she made him add them before
taking it to its destined table.

I had my favorite piece of fish of all three places here, a lemony,
almost sweet, super-rich ono (aka escolar), and I only had it because
the sushi chef told me I should. Left to his own devices, he also made
a simple but balanced, above-par roll: saba, shiso, and pickled
ginger.

There’s less to say about O’shan Sushi—no tree, regular
toilets—but it seems like a very fine place to become a regular
to me. recommended

36 replies on “Ballard: Now with 150% More Sushi”

  1. “Furthermore, “Moshi Moshi Sushi” means “Hello Sushi.” Stare up at the Tree, murmuring “Moshi Moshi!” in your mind, and you are in an anime fairy tale.”

    I had to scroll up to make sure I wasn’t reading a Mudede review. That’s a bad thing.

  3. Nice photo of gross, fatty, pet-food pellet fed, artificially petroleum-dyed, farm salmon in your pic there.

    If they are serving that low of quality salmon, imagine how cheap they go on their other fish?

    Farm salmon eat chicken feathers, chicken shit, rendered sick and dead surplussed farm animals-pigs, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, ducks, geese, rendered put-down pets and rendered roadkill (where did you think those carcasses end up? They are too valuable for their rendered fats to end up in a landfill, ask your vet!), slaughterhouse remnants, endangered foodfish from depleted third world fisheries, factory trawler waste, fly ash and other metal by-products from the metal industry, and whatever is in barrels marked “animal protein” from China.

    The cheapest “shit” in the world baby, out of site, out of mind. Why do think so many pets get tumors, so young?

    Plus all the residual antibiotics, parasiticides, heavy metals, mercury, copper, and lead that gets slipped in for weight.

    Pure poison.

    I know, I used to save a pet food company good money sourcing the cheapest ingredients possible for their premium “natural” pet food line. The cheaper I sourced, the bigger my bonus. My mandate was to fill the vat, and beat the bottom line for protein content, but nobody really checked. The money was too good. So we all cheated, a lot. My bad, bad youth, trying to pay for a too expensive college. Then my favorite prof, out of concern for my soul, gave me a copy of “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair–the 1906 expose of the corruption and excesses of the meatpacking and slaughterhouse industry.

    The nightmares, the horror, the horror. I quit.

    USDA inspections? In four years I never saw an inspector in our plant. And that was during Clinton’s regime. After Bush and Cheney’s gutting of the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, bon appetit !
    You can have all the regulations in the world, but if there is no budget for inspectors……….
    And little has changed since “The Jungle” was published. Really.

    I get much humor from aqua-vegetarians who say the only creatures they eat is fish. But most of the fish they eat is farm-raised and fed pellets of this shit.

    Farm salmon, catfish, trout, steelhead, tilapia, kampachi, basa, “scottish organic farmed salmon-WTF?” and farmed-shrimp. All farmed by mega-corporations that are losing millions on feed costs in this depression and cutting costs anywhere they can. It is way worst now, than when I was in the industry.

    So Eat Shit, literally, you stupid fucking yuppies, and say hello to Fido, Scruffy, Whiskers, Mr. Ed and that dead skunk on the side of the road as it goes down.

    I’ll be at the places that serve sustainable wild salmon. From Alaska.

  5. “The head sushi chef, Kotaro Kumita, trained with traditionalist Shiro, whose Belltown sushi bar is considered by many to be the best in town. (Before that, Kumita spent time behind the bar at Hana on Broadway, considered by many to be just all right, but really cheap.)”

    Farm salmon?

    He didn’t learn much from, Shiro, Shiro doesn’t serve that fake salmon crap.

    Looks like he brought his skills and quality from Hana instead to Ballard. The new fake amateur crowd in Ballard ain’t gonna know the difference.

  6. @3
    You broke my heart.
    I buy cheap dog food and eat cheap sushi.
    My last three puppies died way too young of tumors. Gross, nasty tumors, horrible, cancerous deaths. I need to look into better chow for my baby. And no more fish from farms.

  8. #3
    Farm salmon is good for you. I eat it every day and so do my kids. Fish Farming will save the oceans and the earth. Our industry has a very good record of being environmentally concerned. All of our feed sources are carefully inspected by government agencies. We may have had problems in the past, but we have cleaned up our act. Farm fish are as safe as any other popular American food. We recycle wholesome byproducts from the greatest food factory on earth, the United States, and make a tasty, well loved, inexpensive product that all American families can enjoy. Farmers were the original green hippies.

  11. I always ask the sushi chef if the salmon is farmed or wild. Sometimes I call first. If a waiter hesitates one bit, or doesn’t know, I make them go back into the kitchen and check. If I still think they are bullshitting, I ask to see the invoice for the fish.
    The way to make sure they don’t lie is to frame your question as thus:
    I am bringing in my brother, cousin, or friend, who fishes in Alaska, is a chef, fishmonger, foodblogger, or a foodwriter, or owns a seafood company, and I wanted to check if your salmon is wild or farmed?
    They don’t lie too often when you frame the question like this.

  12. For all the sushi that Seattlites eat, they sure east a bunch of crappy fish.
    How about a list of all the crappy places where you have had bad fish?

    I’ll put Wasabi Bistro on the list, had some squid I had to spit out. Almost puked it was so bad.

    Mashiko in West Seattle tries to pass farm salmon on you.

    Same with Sam’s, Blue C is cheap fish, so is Hana.

  13. @3
    Wow.

    “Farm salmon, catfish, trout, steelhead, tilapia, kampachi, basa, “scottish organic farmed salmon-WTF?” and farmed-shrimp. All farmed by mega-corporations that are losing millions on feed costs in this depression and cutting costs anywhere they can. It is way worst now, than when I was in the industry.”

    I need to do some homework on farmed fish and pet food, any suggestions?
    For sushi I usually go to Maneki’s, no farmed salmon there. I need to check on the other species.

  14. Yeah, what’s the deal with Mashiko? Most of the fish is top rate, then they give you mushy farm salmon, rude. I don’t get it. Why the inconsistency? Are people that stupid that they don’t know, can’t tell? My boyfriend loves the place, I don’t want to go back.

  16. @3 Thanks for wiping out most of the fish I eat. I can pass on everything but trout, my favorite broiled. Where can you buy wild trout? Anybody?

  17. I’ve eaten at Moshi several times. I can tell you that there’s never been farmed salmon served there and their tuna is flash frozen and flown in from Tokyo every AM. The downside is the prices are up there, especially in this economy. And they have great cocktails but they’re on the smaller side. All premium pours but frankly not many people can tell so why pay more? So we’ve cut back on eating there and elsewhere but will still hit their happy hour and Shiku’s.

  18. Here’s an interesting article about what exactly is allowed into your pets’ food.

    Also, I don’t disagree that fish is delicious, but considering that the world’s oceans are responsible for sustaining all life on this planet, I would rather not put that at risk for something that tastes good for a couple minutes.

    Commercial fishing is destroying the oceans. Commercial fish farming is destroying the land.

    Doesn’t seem worth it to me just to satisfy a craving.

  19. @3 and @18
    Holy Smokes! I never realized how dastardly the pet food industry is, and this same crap is fed to farm fish also, just sick.
    I cut out part of the article-pasted below–

    Rendered Unhealthy
    The heartbreaking events of last spring illustrate just how precarious pet-food safety is. Like agribusiness, which puts a pricey marketing spin on meat, eggs, and dairy foods, the $13-billion-a-year pet industry goes to great expense to make consumers feel good about pet food. What’s not to like? Well, for one thing, dog and cat food has become a dumping ground for slaughterhouses: heads, intestines, spinal cord tissue, udders, hooves, and other animal remains considered unfit for human consumption are turned into profit by feeding them to Fido and Fluffy.

    Moreover, rendering plants sell many pet-food manufacturers material called “tankage,” which may contain parts of animals accidentally killed by vehicles, ingredients high in hormone or pesticide residues, expired meat, zoo animals, livestock ear tags, euthanized animals and their flea collars, Styrofoam packaging, and plastic bags. Other contaminants that have been found in commercial dog and cat foods include restaurant grease—complete with high concentrations of dangerous free radicals and trans—fatty acids-antibiotic residues, moldy grain, PCBs, hazardous preservatives, and viral, bacterial, protozoal, fungal, and prion contaminants, the last of which can cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease.

    Among the industry’s most controversial practices is using so-called “4-D meat.” Flesh from disabled, diseased, dying, or dead animals (who died in transit to the slaughterhouse) may not be allowed on the butcher’s counter, but it’s perfectly acceptable in your best friend’s bowl, even if the meat is filled with cancerous tissue and pharmaceuticals.

    The result is a pathogenic smorgasbord that has contributed to a decline in health among companion animals, says Armaiti May, DVM. “Diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, digestive disorders, cystitis, kidney and liver disease, skin problems, obesity, thyroid dysfunction, and various cancers are becoming more common in our domesticated animals,” she says. “This increase in disease incidence is attributed in part to commercial pet foods.”

  20. @17 Ballarddawg

    Dawg, wassup?
    I’m a chef in Ballard, not a sushi chef, but I purchase and cook a lot of salmon and seafood. And Dawg, I bet I could serve you cat and dawg, and you wouldn’t know. The salmon the Moshi chef is holding and the salmon on the plate in the pic is farmed, looks like farmed Atlantic. Those thick, white fat lines are and indication, not natural, and that weird orange color definitely came out of a bottle.

  21. Huh. I think that approximately 90% of the above comments were written by the same person. A better way to make your case against farmed salmon, sir or madam, would be first to research to make sure the restaurant you’re accusing actually serves it. Then to state your case clearly and briefly under a normal-style registered pseudonym. But to each their own, I guess.

    I found the sushi at Shiku excellent, and not only fried or besauced choices. I’m surprised Bethany didn’t enjoy it so much, it seems!

  23. Seattle Sushi Nazis need to wake up.
    Check out this website:
    http://www.sustainablesushi.net/
    Read Bottomfeeder, check out the new Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Sushi List:
    http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr…

    @3 Body is a temple-you can add Farmed Arctic Char to your list–

    Farm salmon, catfish, trout, steelhead, tilapia, kampachi, basa, “scottish organic farmed salmon-WTF?” and farmed-shrimp. All farmed by mega-corporations that are losing millions on feed costs in this depression and cutting costs anywhere they can. It is way worst now, than when I was in the industry.

  24. Shiro’s also using same salmon for many years.
    The farm salmon, but both are “organic” grow atlantic salmon.
    Do you guys know the difference? no mercury. It is absolutely healthy.
    I know both chefs. I am sure they have some special way to get such rare salmon.
    They also cure the salmon(by salt vinegar and kelp), so taste is better. I guess that is a skill of “Edomae”style of sushi.

  25. We hit the Moshi Moshi happy hour about a month back, and it was echoingly empty. Still, that didn’t stop the waitress from ignoring us, the cocktails from being melted popsicles (ie, where’s even a hint of liquor?) or the food from coming out a very, very long time after ordering.
    I felt like I got to know that tree very well, staring at it for thirty minutes, wondering if any part of it was edible.

  26. Big news!!!
    I and my friends went MoshiMoshi yesterday, but Chef Mr.Kumita seems left the company a few days ago.
    We are very sad!! (It sounds like owner side has some prob—s.)???
    His sushi is not regular cheap sushi. He makes sushi tradditional way with great passion. According to other chefs at MoshiMoshi, he was carrying “Wild Sockeye salmon” and “Wild White King Salmon” all the time. Those items was still in the menu. ….but…Can they keep the same quality of fish as Mr. Kumita did???
    Good Luck, “Hello”sushi.

  28. It is not legal to sell “organic” farm salmon in the U.S.
    It’s a scam, it’s Scottish farmed Atlantic Salmon and it falls short of even the lax organic standards here in the U.S. Some British “organic” certifier calls it organic for a nice fee. We looked into serving it and did the research and discovered the scam. Doesn’t stop lots of American Chefs from serving it, it’s cheap, and they can charge suckers as much as wild for the crap.

  30. Just worked the line all night, and cooked and cut lots of wild salmon.
    The fattiest king, Copper River is in. Been cooking fresh springers and trollies all spring.
    None of it looked like that “fish” in the Photo.
    I’ve been cooking sockeye, coho and king all winter. Seen every kind of wild frozen salmon, super fatty to lean. Cooked white king too.
    Give it up fool, that is farmed product.

  31. Are you O.K? Ballard chef?

    It sounds like you have some kind of stress.

    I just read about your comment, but you have wrong idea.

    Do not talk about only salmon. How about other fish?

    They must be useing “sashimi”grade fishes for sure. Not like your grill grade fish!!!

    You posted your comment 4 am in the morning. Were you drinking?

    And you should think about restaurant bussiness. MoshiMoshi is not a high quality

    sushi restaurant. I guess you are trying to ——-.

    Have a bigger mind —-!

    From a restaurant owner in Ballard.

  32. i don’t even care about farmed salmon. i care that this review is stupid.
    ugh. bethany you are not witty or amusing.

  33. @Everybody: Moshi Moshi serves three kinds of salmon: farmed Atlantic, wild sockeye, and wild white (my favorite, though I didn’t have any salmon when I was there).

    @26: It’s true, sushi chef Kotaro Kumita and Moshi Moshi have parted ways as of the day after this article came out. I spoke with Kumita, who indicated that the split was unexpected. Owner Tracy Erickson said by phone that Kumita was “going a different direction” and then declined to comment further; owner Kevin Erickson then left a me voicemail saying he’d like to provide more context. I’ll post again after I speak with him.

    Chefs do come and go a lot, but considering Moshi Moshi’s only been open since February, it does seem like a precipitous change.

  35. Mello, restaurant owner, i love sushi—
    You can’t fool a real chef, fool. And you can’t fool an honest seafood chef in Ballard. There aren’t many of us, but the honest ones among us are golden.
    We are not going to sell you some farm crap like the sushi joints.
    @7 Sushi Lover, I agree, if they are taking shortcuts and selling customers farm salmon, they are probably cutting some corners on other fish also.
    Real sushi lovers demand wild salmon.

Comments are closed.