I Love Uni at Uni

We went to dinner at Uni to celebrate our friend Steph's birthday, and to say goodbye to our friend Alec, who was leaving town. Uni used to be just a small sushi counter, but now it is a big restaurant. It is kind of dark inside, which I liked because it makes it feel cozy. We went early on a Sunday night but it still got very busy. The hostess was very nice when she seated us, and I liked our server too. Our server brought my sister rice right away, and then brought pasta, after my sister got upset about having sesame seeds on her rice. She says she wants to be a big girl and have a blog, but she's not quite a michelinista yet!!

We started with miso soup. It was very hot. I liked that it had whole mushroom pieces in it, but my brother thought that made it hard to sip and that the mushroom pieces blocked other ingredients from floating to the top. I think that the miso soup at Cafe Sushi is more flavorful, but I'll save details on that for another post!

You can see the mushrooms on top of the miso soup. And doesn't my nail polish look fancy?!

Next we had brussels sprouts with nuoc cham, thai herbs and puffed rice. Nuoc cham is a Vietnamese dipping sauce. The brussels sprouts were crispy and the sauce had lots of umami. I really liked this dish, but I think some more of the puffed rice would have added nice crunch. And I would have chopped up the herbs because the pieces were too big to eat. But I would still definitely order this again and highly recommend it!

Do you see what I mean about how the herbs are kind of big?

After that came Hotate (which is the Japanese word for scallop) sashimi with maitake mushroom, Chinese chive vin and candied bacon jam. I liked the bacon jam and chives on this dish, and thought that they sliced the scallops to the perfect thickness. I think that the mushrooms were maybe dried and they were chewy and very good. Overall, it wasn't my favorite thing that we ate, but my brother loved it, which is extra surprising because he doesn't even always like scallops.

I like how they served this with the napkin underneath and thought that the colors of the dish made it look very pretty.

Our next dish was my very favorite and the inspiration for my title for this post! Uni is sea urchin and it doesn't look like it would taste very good. It looks like orange gunk or fungus and it's a little bit slimy, but it actually tastes deeeeelicious. It usually comes from Hokkaido Japan, Santa Barbara or Maine. Uni from different places tastes different and also changes depending on the time of year. A couple of years ago, when I was four, uni was my favorite food. Then I didn't like it so much for a while, but now that I've had the Uni Spoon at Uni, I love it again!!! The Uni Spoon is served with osetra caviar, quail egg yolk and yuzu. Yuzu is a kind of citrus. I didn't know that and I think that I don't like citrus, but I sure like the Uni Spoon, so maybe I do! I thought it was cool, and sort of silly, how the dish actually came on a spoon. The caviar, egg yolk and uni all went very well together. Everybody loved the Uni Spoons. It was my brother's favorite thing that we ate too, and my mom and dad have always loved them.

I like how the spoons looked all lined up on the plates.

This is me getting ready to slurp! My mom and my brother and I make matching bead bracelets and you can see them in this picture!!

Next we had two sashimi courses. We had Kampachi, which is amberjack, with tepache, spicy pineapple and lap cheong. We looked it up and found out that tepache is a fermented pineapple liquor and lap cheong is Chinese sausage. My brother really liked how the pineapple salsa made the fish taste tangy. We also had Hiramasa, which is kingfish, with plum, chartreuse and almond. I liked them both, but I liked the Hiramasa better because the sauce was really good.

This is the Kampachi with the pineapple on top.

This is the Hiramasa with the really good sauce!

Another dish that I really liked was the Tako, which is octopus. It came with warm sesame oil, ginger and barrel aged tamari. I loved the sesame oil and it smelled amazing. The octopus was sliced thinly, like little coins, and it was cooked perfectly.

I love the bowl that this was served in and thought that the herbs on top looked pretty.

Next we had Tai, which is sea bream, and came with charcoal lemonade, ginger crema, and haskap berry. I had never heard of a haskap berry before. It looks a little bit like a long blueberry and grows in lots of countries, including Japan. This one was Alec's favorite. He liked that it tasted very light and fresh. The charcoal looked very dark and I wasn't sure what to expect, but it didn't actually taste like much.

The Tai is another dish that came on a unique plate. I really liked how the restaurant used different plates to make each dish look special.

I like to eat almost everything, but eel is one of the few foods that I don't really care for. We got the Unagi, which is fresh water eel, with mushroom crema, and foie gras kabayaki. Kabayaki is a way of cooking fish where it is split down the back, and cut into filets before being dipped into a sweet sauce and grilled. I tried the eel because we have a rule at special restaurants that my brother and I have to try everything. I still don't love it but I'll keep trying because I know that lots of people do!

We had a plate of nigiri, which is what most people think of as sushi, fish pieces served on top of rice. We had salmon nigiri with beet and gochujang, hamachi with ponzu powder and pickled chili, and my dad and Alec and Steph had toro. Gochujang is a red Korean chili paste. It wasn't very spicy and I loved the salmon, but the pickled chili on the hamachi was!

I loved how the nigiri came in a circle, instead of just lined up. It looked like a delicious clock!

We also had Chiang Mai Duck Carnitas with green papaya salsa, scallion pancake and baby shrimp. Chiang Mai is a city in Thailand. I thought it was a good idea how they used the pancake sort of like a chip or a taco. I loved this dish, but it was a little bit messy to eat.

The Chiang Mai Duck Carnitas looked a little bit like nachos!

We also had the Stir Fried Japanese Cauliflower & Celery Root with pepperoni xo and shallot. XO is a spicy seafood sauce from Hong Kong and I love the name because it makes me think of hugs and kisses! It would be a great sauce to serve on Valentine's Day! I really like cauliflower, but I liked the celery root in this dish even more.

The celery root is the square chunks and it was nice and crunchy!

We also had Takoyaki, which is a very popular Japanese street food. They're usually balls of batter with little pieces of octopus in them. These were made with katsuobushi, okonomi sauce and kewpie. Katsuobushi, are similar to bonito flakes. They're dried, fermented and smoked, but they're made with skipjack tuna instead of bonito. Okonomi is a sauce. It's similar to Worcestershire, but it's sweeter and less salty. Kewpie is Japanese mayonnaise. I loved the takoyaki. They were crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. The inside almost had the texture of mashed potatoes.

Takoyaki

One of our last dishes was Grilled Kama, which is hamachi collar. It's the part of the fish that is like the back of it's neck, where its collar would be if it wore a shirt! The fish was very soft and moist and savory. I liked it a lot.

Can you see how it's shaped like a collar?

Our last savory dish was A5 Wagyu Sirloin on Hot Rock. You should all know what Wagyu beef is from reading this blog! But this dish was special because we got to cook the beef ourselves on a hot rock! We put each piece on the rock and counted to five and then did the same thing for the other side. My dad did it for my piece because the rock was VERY hot. I loved the beef and I thought it was really fun to cook it.

This is the hot cooking rock.

We ended with desserts with candles in them for Steph and Alec. We had a Coconut Klondike, with almond, coconut jam, and lime, and Chocolate and Avocado Mousse, with pineapple, miso caramel, and popcorn. A Klondike is a kind of chocolate covered ice cream bar, and that's what this dessert was like. It was very delicious. We all agreed that the Chocolate and Avocado Mousse tasted too much like avocado and not enough like chocolate mousse. But the popcorn part was great!! I think that we were all so excited about dessert, that we forgot to take pictures! But they were very pretty.

I think that Uni is a great restaurant. The food is delicious and creative and you can try lots of new things there! I definitely want to go back!!