Sushi of Gari UES — Restaurant in New York

I will never go back here again.

This is not sushi... or at least not to me. It is Americanized sushi, not Japanese sushi.

Recently, I went to Sushi Yasuda (read my review here) and it was the most amazing sushi experience I ever had. My fiance and I wanted that same amazingly fresh and lightly marinated sushi that you don't need to eat soy sauce with so we decided to go to a nice sushi place again for my birthday. We chose Sushi of Gari because it was close to our place and had good ratings, but we were extremely disappointed in the sushi and couldn't get over how Americanized this sushi is.

Here are my thoughts on Upper East Side restaurants based on the ones I've been to-- I need to take a star off the rating and decide based on this adjusted rating. Sushi of Gari should definitely be a 3. It is no where near on par with Sushi Yasuda, and even Hatsuhana, which is not at the same level as Sushi Yasuda but a great authentic Japanese sushi place.

So here goes our night: We walk into Sushi Yasuda. I see that you can walk into the left or the right and choose to go to the right-- but wait, no you can't go to the left, that's just a mirror in the small and cramped hallway. Once you walk in, you hit a wall in about -5 sec. and are crammed right next to the hostess. At least you know where the hostess is.

We asked our new server about the specials. She sharply answered that there was none although we were sure the last server was about to show us some. Luckily, the friendly people next to us told us about some of the sushi specials they got like the 'tomato salmon sushi'. We ordered two of these to try these for kicks-- um... I won't order it again. It's interesting but the tomatoe overtakes the taste of the salmon (what did I say, so Americanized).

I ordered the special sushi box, which was a really good deal. You get 9 sushi's and a sushi roll. Some of the sushi was not sushi-- one was an eggplant sushi and one was a seared scalloped sushi. The seared scallop sort of looked like a fried potato and tasted like one too with the slight hint of scallop. I got a medium fatty tuna sushi with my set, which is priced at $13 so that in itself made it a good deal. That was the best piece of sushi I had in the set. The tuna sushi had a dollop of tofu cream on top (yes, again Americanized).

OK getting over the fact that half my sushi was some American fusion sushi, not just straight up sushi (maybe I should've done more research before coming but I thought sushi is sushi... apparently I was wrong), I'll focus on the quality of the sushi itself.... it's not that good for what you're paying for. Every piece of sushi should be marked down $1 or $1.50. It didn't taste fresh and it wasn't marinated properly. You had to use soy sauce.

I got the uni and it was OK. It tasted fishy. Again, not that fresh.

The rice of the sushi was sort of cold, hard and not marinated. Rice for sushi should be more at room temperature and have a good blend of vinegar and sugar. This...

Food was good to excellent, but I have to knock the service rating down a bunch for what I consider to be deceptive business practices. We didn't have a reservation and came in at 6:30pm on a Saturday. There were two seats at the sushi bar available. We were a bit put off by the "B" grade from the NYC Dept of Health for "Evidence of rats or live rats present in facility's food and/or non-food areas." We decided to give them the benefit of the doubt though give the excellent reviews.

We opted for the sashimi omakase. We asked how much the omakase would likely end up being, and the waitress very carefully explained that they don't have a set price for the omakase and it depends on how much you eat. She said that for the sashimi omakase the chefs use more fish, so it can cost a little more than the sushi, and then she explained that the omakase dishes vary between $4 and $16 and that on average they are about $8.

So we were going on the assumption of $8 per course. We had 9 courses (two of us). The charge for the omakase came to $270, pre-tax, pre-tip. No breakdown of any kind of how much each piece had cost. With 3 glasses of wine and tip, we paid $390. We were incredulous. $270/18=$15 a course. Double the average is not "a little more", sorry. We consider ourselves pretty savvy diners as we have lived in NYC for a while, and this is at the very least deceptive practice and frankly feels like a straight-up scam to us.

Oddly enough, a family member had a similar experience with the Upper West Side Gari. They gave them a fixed price for the omakase course, and at some point in the meal they asked them a question like "are you ready for more"? They said "yes, sure". Turned out they were ordering a second omakase course.

The food itself was very good - an excellent toro dish, yellowtail, a really innovative salmon piece with sautéed tomato, snapper with pine nuts and lotus root, tuna with tofu sauce and others. If you go to their website and click on the photos next to the menu, you can get a good idea of what the omakase courses will be like.

But it wasn't worth the price by any means. Soto downtown is better, and...

Sushi from NYC's old school sushiya, Sushi of Gari. It once it held a one Michelin star but not anymore to my knowledge. It is definitely one of the restaurants that started the sushi culture in the early 1990s for New Yorkers and still keeps its class to some level. For sushi perhaps, I have had better looking ones, however, the full umami flavor from its aged fresh fish was another level. You can copy the look, but the flavor was unique and this place had that depth. Of course out of their own pride or dignity, they are too cool to offer miso soup or a maki along with the nigiri. Nonetheless, I think you still need to try it at least once. I personally found their sautéd tomato garnish over the salmon nigiri very interesting. It was such a surprise how much umami flavor came out from pairing the salmon and tomato. Also, the funniest part is that the $140 sushi omakase comes with fresh wasabi, but the $40 something chirashi comes with cheap soulless dry wasabi lol...you definitely get what you pay for here....or a bit less.

Speaking of the chirashi don, even though you are getting low quality, gloomy wasabi, the fish on top of the sushi rice are still very pronounced. The snapper was aged well, as I chewed a few times its flavor hit my tongue. For the akami, I usually feel that it is bland compared to other tuna cuts, but not from here. It is definitely a nice and economical way to taste aged fresh fish flavors.

I see many reviews of disappointment with the food or service. However, it is worth trying...