| rev:text
| - It looks like E.Honda from Street Fighter decorated the place. It's dark, it's loud, and there are colorful flashing images of Japanese stuff on the walls. Since it's fusion food, there might have been other images spliced in between. I don't know, it's probably all subliminal.
Japanese-Brazilian-Peruvian fusion is an interesting concept. I've eaten all 3 types of cuisine separately, and I know the distinct flavors. But fusion? Usually I take that word to the extreme -- either really bad, or really good. Here, based on the dishes we had, it's teetering somewhere in the middle.
Right off the bat, our waitress was energetic and helpful, especially when I asked her for recommendations. Since the menu can be daunting, she recommended the chef omakase, which can range from $60-100 per person. The higher range includes cooking thin slices of kobe beef on a hot rock. We eventually decided to go with the items on the menu.
I started off with the Samba Juice cocktail, which practically has every exotic fruit flavor imaginable like watermelon, acai, raspberry, guava, passion fruit, etc. While refreshing, it was just basically overpriced fruit juice. It desperately needed more alcohol. Oh there was rum in there? I think there was a tickle of rum on my tongue.
The food arrived fast, which was good and bad at the same time. The tables for 2 are ridiculously small and cramped. It was like playing Tetris, trying to fit in all the plates on our table without having anything fall over. We ordered a good variety of dishes, some hits and some misses.
Thumbs up:
- Rock shrimp tempura
- Crispy taquitos (tacos) w/ yellowtail seviche
- Yellowtail sashimi seviche
Thumbs sideways:
- "Whole" squid w/ lemon aioli
- Grilled hamachi kama
- Banana honey crisp taquito (taco)
Thumbs down:
- Samba strip roll w/ maine lobster
- Miso sea bass skewer w/ peruvian corn
This may sound extreme, but just telling it like it is -- the $19 sushi roll tasted like Costco sushi. The texture of the rice was mushy and slithery, like it was pre-made and left in the fridge for a while. I didn't even really taste any lobster. They did leave out the shells for presentation, just to remind you that it does, in fact, contain lobster.
The miso sea bass skewer was horribly oversalted, either from plain salt or from the miso marinate. While buttery in texture, it was barely edible without having to take a big gulp of water. The peruvian corn kernels look like regular corn on steroids. While intriguing to look at, they were bland and had an uneasy and chewy texture about them.
The other dishes were okay, nothing extremely imaginative or creative on the palate. Although we ordered our own dessert, our waitress was nice enough to give us an additional complimentary chocolate mousse with these little crunchy malt balls on top, to celebrate our anniversary. It even had a sparkler on it, attracting dozens of eyes. I felt like a baller at a club, albeit for 10 seconds before the sparkler died off.
Overall, we had an enjoyable dinner with good service. But the whole fusion thing didn't work out for me. If I want Japanese food, I know where to get it -- the same goes for Brazilian and Peruvian, respectively. It was cool trying the place out, just another restaurant checked off on our long list of Vegas bookmarks.
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