Chubby Bunny

Can you Sushi Mambo?

The venue I picked for NYU’s Middle C dinner this summer was a small restaurant in the West Village called Sushi Mambo. As my brother said, with a name like that, could there be a more appropriate neighborhood to for a Japanese restaurant with a fun-loving name?

I made reservations for the group and when I got there, the arrangements were 13 seats in a long rectangle tabled formed by their small square tables. The waitstaff was very kind, cooperative and accomodating. However, I will honestly say this is the second miss I’ve had in selecting a restaurant with appropriate lighting– I am not a fan of sitting in the dark with Christmas lights strewn across the ceiling and the doors wide open for all’aperto dining.

Ambience aside, the restaurant had a few other pluses, such as a good variety of sushi on the menu. Also, considering it was dinner time, the prices were fair; the lunch menu had prices similar to most other Japanese restaurants in the neighborhood. But if I went by the price of tenpura ice cream as the standard for comparing different Japanese restaurants, then this one was on the pricier end.

Now, what little I have retained from high school Japanese classes certainly revolves around common Japanese dishes and names of ingredients for those dishes. Since I had experience making oyako don for homwork once and I had a good experience with oyako don at lunch with Dorcas at Hanami before, I decided to give it a try at Sushi Mambo.
Oyako don is a rice bowl dish, where rice is covered with egg, chicken, some vegetables and other garnish. Typically, there should be a broth made from cooking the chicken, seasoned with ingredients like mirin (a sweet seasoning that can be substituted with soy sauce and sugar) and hon dashi. My mom calls hon dashi a metaphor for MSG with salt and bonito fish flavor– it leaves me unbelievably thirsty. But I digress.

The first thing I noticed about my entree was the presentation.

Ooh, ah, how pretty. Right?

Unfortunately, the next thing I noticed just by looking was that they overcooked the egg. I thought, okay, it’s just the egg. Then upon breaking into the dish, I discovered overcooked chicken breast.

There is no greater violation for a restaurant than to overcook chicken breast, of all things. If there can be only one measure as to how good the food is at any restaurant, it should be the ability to cook chicken breast so that it is not paper dry.

Okay, relax, ok. So the chicken is drier than the eggs.

It was overloaded with pickled turnip, shreds of seaweed and also sesame seeds.

I was moaning and groaning inside, distressed from ruining my streak of ordering wonderful food, blindly. (Really! The last time my family went to Boston, I ordered the delectable scrod when everyone else in my family had lobster; my family loved my scrod more than their lobster.)
To make things worst, the sweet broth I expected at the bottom of my bowl was non-existent. There was nothing there to accompany the very dry white rice that filled the rest of my bowl.

I did learn something new however.

Shichimi Togarashi! This was under optional vocabulary back in the day. It’s a small bottle of seven seasonings blended together and I can’t remember what was in it except the sesame seeds and maybe some cinnamon.

Fortunately, food can take a backseat in importance when eaten in good company. I had a piece of sushi from Melanie and Andy’s unfinished platter, and I admit that was good. Perhaps the trick to Sushi Mambo would be to order the sushi, and not the other Japanese entress, which I find to be disappointing.

Oh, and since we all love visuals so much, I should show the Irene’s ten don.

Ten don is tenpura over rice. Now, unfortunately, they just did tenpura shrimp and some sliced vegetables over super dry white rice. Bo-ring. And disappointing, but it wasn’t my entree so I don’t think it would be fair for me to judge.

Overall, the experience for me was mixed. I enjoyed being there, because of the service and the company I was with. But if I were to remember this as a food experience alone, it is a bleak and disappointing one.