Last night we went to Kushi -- a new Japanese restaurant in the new Mass. Ave corridor near the Convention Center. It's a totally different experience from the "normal" Japanese style and well worth the visit.
The decor is very spare and modern -- a hard box like structure with two open kitchen areas. One kitchen is the traditional sushi bar; the other a much more innovative charchol and wood grilling area. Both had serving counters for those who wanted to watch the food being cooked.
The architecture made the place a bit noisier than we might like. Worse yet, even on a Tuesday night it was wicked crowded. We had to wait 20+ minutes for our table. But there was a fair amount of energy in the room -- the place has a hip, New York kind of vibe to it. And the owner, Darren, who sensed that we were getting impatient with the wait, made up for it by sharing a glass of chardonnay (J Lohr) and sake with us.
And in the end, the wait was worth it. The style was one of lots of small plates served as they came out of the kitchen. Think sort of "tapas" for Japan. We had some neat and interesting tastes we had never had before -- a fried tofu dish; a pork belly skewer with some sweet sauce; wood-grilled eggplant; and even a really good kimchee. To top it off we finished with some sushi -- which was a more expected type of taste, but even here the quality of the fish was higher than we usually expect.
In short, Kushi is worth a return visit. It's relatively newly opened and still working the kinks out, but if they can solve some of the problems this one will be a keeper. We give it 2 1/2 stars.
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