I don't remember why I was sitting in the lobby of the Hampton Inn just off Fletcher Avenue, either early in the morning or late at night, but in any case, the manager behind the front desk was bored and chatty.
We started safely enough, discussing the weather, but eventually we got down to the nitty-gritty of personal stuff, his favorite food. I am always curious about what people like to eat.
"Sushi, absolutely," he confided, adding for emphasis, "Everybody here likes sushi."
He doodled on the phone pad. A University of South Florida ring shone on his pinky.
I inquired which restaurant he patronized, and was surprised at his definitive answer — "We all order from Sushi Tsu."
I took a hotel flier from the counter display and wrote down "Sushi Sue," thinking from his pronunciation that the restaurant bore the name of someone named "Sue." He read it upside-down from behind the front desk and corrected it that way, too: "Sushi Tsu."
A year later, I found the flier, his careful correction still scrawled across it. That's how I ended up at the Shoppes of Amberly shopping center in north Tampa, where the restaurant occupies a storefront. The simple, bare tables seat 60, and a 13-seat sushi bar runs along one side of the dining room. Its name translates from Japanese to mean "Sushi connoisseur."
The sushi was excellent on both trips. It was fresh, expertly assembled, and, if you took advantage of a chalkboard listing some unusual daily specials, pretty creative. Oh, there were several dishes I didn't like, and on both trips, the server was error-prone and slow; but with careful ordering, one can eat pretty well there.
My first visit was decidedly less successful than the second. I started with hot green tea, as there was a little chill in the air. My tea was almost gone by the time I got my appetizer, shrimp tempura and vegetables ($5.50). It came out steamy, the shrimp looked and smelled fresh, the vegetables were verdant and colorful, but its frying produced an unpleasant oiliness I didn't like. I left most of it on the plate.
Though it tasted just average, I ate a whole cup of miso soup ($1.75), maybe because the server kept us waiting so long for the main courses, miserable amid a table of dirty dishes and empty water glasses.
When the entrées finally began to arrive, we felt better, as we liked a plateful of Mexican sushi rolls ($4.50), made with fried shrimp, avocado and a bright coating of smelt roe. A nice sushi-sashimi combination platter ($17.95) featured one tuna roll and six pieces of sushi, along with sashimi, which is just plain raw fish. It was simple, glisteningly sea-fresh and satisfying. That was the highlight of the evening.
My guest didn't care for her chicken teriyaki ($11.50), a generous mound of diced chicken accompanied by a wispy haystack of salad. She ate the salad — shredded carrots, sprouts and onion, topped with a frisky ginger dressing. However, after two bites of the chicken she left the rest on the plate, as it tasted flat. It could have used seismic jolts of garlic, sake and fresh ginger to wrest it from the ordinary.
We waited a long time for the check and were glad to leave.
The second visit was much better. The starter was sunomono salad ($4.95), crispy cucumber cold with shrimp, crab and octopus, doused with sunomono sauce. This sweet-sour sauce, made from rice vinegar, salt, sugar and water, was as subtle as a cloud and equally effervescent; eating it was like standing open-mouthed in an April rainshower.
A second outstanding dish came from the appetizer menu, listed as "TNT" mussels ($4.95), which proved apt, as they were dynamite. New Zealand mussels baked in wasabi, sprinkled with scallion and smelt roe, they were just one tiny but potent bite each.
However, in retrospect, the dish that really impressed me was one we ordered from the "daily specials" on the blackboard — a set of "volcano" sushi rolls ($6.95). Fiery in color and quaking with flavor, these were little mountains of hot topping (baked salmon and smelt roe set in a cream sauce "lava") perched atop a cold "California roll" of crab, cucumber and avocado, wrapped in rice. Sometimes you can gauge how successful a dish is by how difficult it is to put down your chopsticks; considering how delectable those babies were, the level of difficulty was right up there with active-volcano platform diving — three somersaults from a back pike position, say.
However, the service was again poor. After one mix-up, we asked the server to take an item back and bring us the right one, and we again waited too long for the check.
My guest that night was Andrew Moos, founder of the Tampa Bay Sushi Society and an owner of a catering firm called GoSushiCatering, Inc., of Tampa. He offered some useful suggestions for sushi lovers dining out:
1. Time your visits to local sushi restaurants to take advantage of the freshest fish — most of the sushi-grade fish served in Tampa comes from Miami, and is delivered on Tuesdays and Fridays. However, some restaurants have local sources that could deliver at other times. It might be worth investigating the delivery schedule of your favorite sushi stop.
2. If the dish you order is timid, ask the chef if he can provide spicy dipping sauce. Some chefs custom-make sizzling firepower, as was the case at Sushi Tsu's, but we had to ask for Chef Jay Choe's fabulous Japanese chili sauce.
3. Do not take leftover sushi home and try to eat it the next day. The vinegar that holds the rice together turns sour overnight.
4. Check out the daily "specials" for unusual dishes and seasonal offerings that may not appear on the regular menu. Sometimes that's where you'll find the best dishes.
5. If your party includes children or people squeamish about eating raw fish, they can still eat sushi. Order sushi with cooked shrimp or chicken wrapped in rice.
Food critic Sara Kennedy dines anonymously and the Planet pays for her meals. Restaurants chosen for review are not related to advertising. Contact her at 813-248-8888, ext. 116, or [email protected].
