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| - My meal and experience at Blue Ribbon featured the best sushi, sashimi and other Japanese fare that I have had yet! Six of us ventured to the restaurant with our friend and veteran sushi chef and through his connections, dishes were selected and brought to us strategically, rather than ordering off the menu.
We began with a couple plates of fresh, delicious, melt-in-your-mouth hamachi (yellowtail) sashimi dosed in a light soy sauce based dressing and topped with thin slices of jalapeƱo and perfectly seared ahi (tuna) in its own tantalizing sauce tossed with fresh scallions and mixed greens on the side.
Next was the highlight of our night: The Blue Ribbon Special. A two-foot wooden platter decorated with carefully-carved fish skeletons and intricate cucumber designs was filled with an extravagant variety of specialty sashimi and rolls. This included raw uni (sea urchin) on a bed of lemon slices in its own casing, a pile of lightly marinated raw jellyfish, spicy crab rolls, roses made of wild tuna sashimi, madai (Japanese red snapper) sashimi and sake (salmon) sashimi, thin slices of sawara (Spanish mackerel) sashimi lined along its own skeleton, the Blue Ribbon special roll with 1/2 lobster, shiso and black caviar, the Dragon special roll with avocado, eel and radish sprouts, and finally, hirame (fluke) sashimi with its skeleton. Everything was extremely fresh, delicious and simply amazing.
To add to an already over-the-top meal, the chef brought us the Karai Ise Ebi roll (spicy lobster in an egg wrapper topped with black caviar) and Unagi (fresh water eel) nigiri. Then, Kobe beef tartare carefully topped with fresh scallions and egg yolk and their version of fried chicken that you dip in a tasty wasabi honey sauce. I finished the meal with a couple of the best spicy tuna, salmon and yellowtail hand rolls I've EVER had.
Their fresh and decadent desserts didn't disappoint either. Ginger bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and candied yuzu (amazing!!), green tea, azuki bean and mandarin orange mochi ice cream, and lastly, flourless chocolate cake with green tea ice cream (best tasting GT ice cream, hands down!).
When it comes to freshness, creativity and attention to detail, Blue Ribbon is arguably the best sushi restaurant in town. The only "con" is certainly its price tag (our whole meal with a few drinks and a cold bottle of sake, sales tax and very generous gratuity was approximately $1,000 for six). If you're dining as a couple, the Blue Ribbon Special platter will be all you need for a satisfying meal and it could even stretch to comfortably feed four. That being said, it's a toss whether or not the food and dining experience is worth the cost, however, I would definitely love an encore.
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