By Sasha Elenko, Co-Content Editor
I originally planned on writing my column this month about a $75 sushi dinner at Shiro’s Sushi Restaurant, a meal that was to be designed by Shiro Kashiba, who spent years training under Jiro Ono. Ono had already been considered the best sushi chef in the world before the 2012 documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” took him closer to household recognition than any sushi chef has ever been — not to mention earning 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
But that was before my parents brought home a 250-gram brick of Caramore, a Norwegian brand of chocolate-colored Brunost cheese. I became convinced that the world simply had to know about this cheese.
But that was before I realized that actually, the world did not have to know about this cheese. And but so, I digress.
I arrived at Shiro’s, located in Belltown, with a group of friends for our 8:30 p.m. reservation at precisely — you guessed it — 8:29 p.m., but was told by the host to wait another 15 minutes. We passed the time standing right outside the door because — while it was about 45 degrees — we were entranced by the rickety old infrared space heaters situated above the restaurant’s windows.
At 8:44, we entered the 7-yard by 2-yard indoor vestibule. The walls were embedded with glass display cases showcasing various Japanese dolls and model ships. We waited another 5 minutes alongside three other parties before a table finally opened.
Our host led us past the sushi bar — you have to arrive long before the restaurant’s 5:30 p.m. opening time if you want any chance at getting seated there — through the main dining room, and into a small backroom which looked like it easily could have been for either exclusive high-class patrons or the less bourgeois diners that the restaurant wanted to hide away. It was probably just another room.
Everything about this room was shockingly normal. The northern wall was modeled after a traditional Japanese byōbu screen with two iterations of the restaurant’s logo — “Shiro’s Sushi” overlayed on Japanese characters spelling out “Shiro” — and was illuminated from behind the screen. The opposite wall, where we sat, had four large windows, each with blinds lowered but not closed, such that I could still see the full moon rising above the 25-floor Darth Vader Building a few blocks away on Fourth Avenue.
The ceiling was moderately low, except for a three-foot-wide section adjacent to the wall and directly above about half of the table where we sat. This weird ceiling corridor rose a good 10 feet above the rest of the ceiling, forming a sort of channel for the quiet jazz that emanated from the vaulted speakers. Our table was equipped with little more than paper napkins and disposable chopsticks.
I did not hesitate when I ordered the $75 Omakase, which consisted of six plates of sushi, intermediated by a bowl of soup — all of the chef’s choosing. I try not to make a practice of dropping $75 at any restaurant, but this had been my plan all along.
With each sushi dish, our server brought a small bowl of soy sauce, and used a brush held between chopsticks to glaze our nigiri. Most of the plates came with three or four pieces of sushi, and we were instructed to eat them from right to left.
Some of the dishes seemed to have very little in common between each successive piece of sushi — a roll topped with uni (sea urchin), a white fish nigiri with a dab of some white relish sort of thing and another piece of nigiri with a beautiful pink and red fish which had a segment of skin artfully left on one edge, for example. Even after finishing these plates, it was nearly impossible to discern what made that particular combination and sequence of sushi fitting, but nonetheless, a quick moment of introspection infallibly affirmed that it in fact was not arbitrary.
My favorite dishes were the ones which juxtaposed different variations of the same fish. The salmon plate started with a marbled piece of Atlantic salmon topped with a pinch of sea salt, as well as lemon juice, which we applied at our server’s behest. The second piece was also Atlantic salmon, and we drizzled lemon juice on this one too, but the cut was leaner, and it was garnished with a few slivers of onion and a strip of nori.
It was at this point that I remember being struck by the sheer deliberation that distinguishes good sushi from great sushi. Both pieces were Atlantic salmon — that much was discernible by taste — but they also had utterly different essences. I became convinced that it simply would not have worked had the marbled piece been topped with the onion and nori, and the leaner piece topped with sea salt.
I also became acutely aware of the chef’s precision. As I bit each piece of sushi, it separated with the utmost ease, and my tongue could detect each distinct stratum of ingredients, unperturbed by my chewing and by the enzymes in my saliva. It was as though my mouth had too much respect for the skill that crafted the sushi to do anything other than divide it into smaller and smaller pieces.
The third piece on the plate was Alaskan salmon. It was unmistakably a different animal — not just a different flavor of fish, but a different animal, in the same way that people are different. It was almost as though the chef were a fashion designer who gauged the personalities of each of his models before assembling the perfect outfit.
In a way, the almost banal decor of the restaurant was fitting. The humble setting made pretense and distraction impossible — it was all about the sushi.
Not once in our seven courses did I doubt that it was worth the $75 tag. The manifest skill and intellect that went into the sushi was irreplicable, and could only be understood across multiple iterations; a single piece can convey the hard work that is required to produce amazing sushi, but only with the full meal was I able to sense the pure genius necessary to craft such beauty in so many different ways.
I later learned that Shiro no longer works at Shiro’s Sushi. He sold the restaurant back in 2014 to the I Love Sushi group — their Lake Union location was actually a favorite of mine when I was little — and set up shop a few miles south in Pike Place at Sushi Kashiba, where he operates today. I guess that explains why the restaurant seemed so normal.
I know I said that I try not to spend $75 on single meal very often, but maybe, just maybe, this post-fact realization might merit another go.