Sushi On My Street
There is a strange little space right down the street from my house. It has a small ground level space cut down the middle with stairs that lead up through a pseudo-mudejar archway meant to evoke Arabian palaces. It used to house a Moroccan cafe called Marrakesh Expresso, which had hookah and low cushioned chairs around tables in the windows, but which never seemed to have any customers. Empanada Boy and I used to talk about going there sometime, but we never got around to it. Sadly, I don’t think there’s anything we could have done to save the place. We weren’t surprised to see a “for lease” sign hanging in the window a few months ago.
Not long after, we were excited to see that a Japanese restaurant was preparing to open in its place. Grand Katachi has been open for a few weeks, and we went in to try it on Friday night. The interior decor combines the old Moroccan look with a kind of Ikea-inspired cheap-but-hip look. They painted the walls white and installed wavy light fixtures and white Formica tables and chairs. Most of the seating is upstairs through the mudejar archway. Brightly-colored artwork— pretty bad on close inspection— adorns the walls.
The restaurant is BYOB, so EB and I started things off with some Sapporo left over from our last sushi outing. EB was feeling in the mood for something substantial, so he ordered the Unagi Don (pictured above). It came in a lacquered box filled with pickled ginger-flecked rice, topped with strips of grilled eel (unagi). The unagi was coated in the sweet, teriyaki-like sauce, traditionally used with eel. The dish looked beautiful, but the fish served a little too cold, and even the rice was lukewarm. This made me wonder whether the dish had just been prepared or if the pieces had been sitting around in the kitchen for a while. My nigiri sushi, shown here, was fine but definitely not amazing. I had a piece of yellowtail and a piece of red snapper. The quality of the fish was decent, although not as thick or firm as I thought the $2.50 and $2 a piece price tag merited. The rice could have also been a tad bit warmer.
Grand Katachi’s maki menu seemed to be mostly made up of cooked fish. Only a few of the pricier rolls had super white tuna and other notable fish additions. Not feeling like springing for an extra $5, I went with the spider maki. These were made with deep fried soft shell crab, avocado, scallion and a spicy Japanese mayo. I like this roll because it’s crunchy on the inside and softer on the outside. This particular version, while tasty, wasn’t innovative or inspiring. The ingredients were good, but there was no flavor that stood out and carried the dish beyond the average.
All I can say is that hopefully Grand Katachi continues to grow and improve in its new space. Perhaps the restaurant will use the next few months to start focusing on procuring better fish and vegetables and on taking the food to a more interesting level. If it doesn’t make these improvements, I’m afraid it will meet the same sad fate as its Moroccan predecessor. Maybe leaving that archway intact was bad luck.
Grand Katachi
4747 N. Damen Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625
773.271.4541
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Popover said,
January 14, 2008 @ 9:56 am
No comment on Grand Katachi, other than to say that Madison (WI) has a terrific sushi restaurant named Muromoto. (It has to be terrific because, as Lassie and EB know, I’m not a big fan of sushi, but I love this restaurant’s offerings.) However, I thought I would take this opportunitiy to brag a little about Madison’s culinary qualifications. Here are some surprising facts, as recently published in the January issue of “In Business” magazine of Madison (taken, in turn, from the trade magazine “Restaurant Business.”) Madison has 1,432 restaurants, one for every 380 residents of the metro area; Milwaukee’s restaurant-per-capita figure is 420; Chicago’s is 456. Madison’s restaurants average $718,000 in annual sales, or about $1,887 per resident (6.28% of average income). All of this, according to “Restaurant Business,” makes Madison the 84th “best place” in the country in which to open a restaurant — just between Boston and Indianapolis. No bad for a little university town.
Charlie Tuna said,
January 14, 2008 @ 7:01 pm
Gotta tell you, I took my parents to Katachi, and I was just about as disappointed as a fishboy could be.
You’re right in that the pieces are constructed a bit strange. First, the “Snapper” in the picture (my apologies for the Zagat quotes)? It’s Tilapia. I can tell by looking at it. It’s why I’ll only get it if it’s on the chef’s choice, because then and only then, can I overlook it. If I’m paying 2.50 for a piece of fish, it sure isn’t going to be for frozen catfish cousin over here.
That’s right. I said Frozen. Having been in the industry for a while now, it’s no big secret to me that restaurants that get their Sashimi fixings in frozen have become the norm. It’s all mass produced, and made to resmble a shadow of its former self. Those who don’t, or who at least get the good stuff, aren’t found in Chicago.
Go ahead. Taste the tuna. Better yet, poke it. Witness how the outline of your thumbprint does not move. They call it a depression for a reason. That’s how you feel when you realize that you’ve been taken.
The biggest thing for my mother was that they sat us in the corner, just beneath a speaker bumping whatever kind of music they had on that night. Too loud. My biggest beef was that they really didn’t even try. The ice cubes of frozen tuna were out on display in the chiller on the sushi bar, and when I looked around and saw the 8-top of sorority friends walk in, I knew I must have found the wrong place.
When the greatest artistry a sushi joint has to offer is the little leaf they draw with the Wasabi, we’ve got problems.
Let me know if you want to give it another try in a couple months. This is the second outpost of their Wrigleyville location, which means that at some point, they had to be doing something right.
Right?
Lastly, I miss Marrakech Expresso. I went there a couple times, and it was such comfort food, but so limiting in terms of how often I actually wanted to eat Morrocan food. Now, I’d gladly eat it any day of the week over the current.
Mango Lassie said,
January 15, 2008 @ 9:55 am
Thanks for your comments, Charlie Tuna. I agree with your mom about the music. It was horrible and distracting. You may well be right about the mistaken identity of the red snapper. I read something about the FDA investigating Chicago restaurants for using fake substitutes for red snapper. They thought the problem started at the distributor level.
I agree that Grand Katachi needs a lot of improvement with its fish quality, but that is not necessarily because they use frozen fish. In fact, as reported in the New York Times in 2004 it is illegal to serve raw fish in the U.S. that has not been previously frozen. In other words, the fact that Grand Katachi serves previously frozen fish is probably not the reason its fish is bad. It probably started out with cheaper, inferior cuts and may have done a poor job of thawing the fish so as to prevent it from becoming gummy and mealy.
I also have to disagree about your comment that there are no top quality sushi restaurants in Chicago. I have always loved Tanoshii in Andersonville, which uses far better ingredients and is also much more innovative. For fish that really stands alone, though, you have to try Mirai Sushi in Wicker Park. It costs a pretty penny, but it serves some of the finest sashimi I’ve tried.
Charlie Tuna said,
January 17, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
The big thing is this: if you don’t have enough customers to satisfy what it costs you to put out a reasonable amount of fish for display in your sushi case, you can either put out way too much and spoil it, or put out not enough and have it be poor quality.
Previously frozen is an interesting term. I’ve seen a few different ways of freezing fish. First, the block freeze. Fillet it on the boat, cryovac it, and deep freeze it within hours of catch. For salmon, many operations use a 4 to 6% sugar solution to keep the quality and texture of the fish high as it slacks out in a fridge.
Second, there’s the Tuna, Tsukiji style. Blast Chilling mostly the outer thick layer of the skin, while super chilling the tuna on the inside, thusly not affecting the delicate cellular structure of the tuna, which after thawing improperly, will collapse and become the mush that we, for example, have seen at Katachi.
Lastly, there is a superchill method for already filleted fish such as tilapia and Lake Victoria Perch, where fillets are deep skinned and either put into bags individually, or sprayed with water and chilled to the mid 20 degree mark. This puts a thin layer of ice around the outside that is easily dealt with during the 24+ hour shipping process from source to market. It melts, the gel pack inside the styrofoam softens, and the product stays in temp while keeping its moderately hardy structure.
Most fish are surprisingly resistant to freezing, but when every sushi restaurant in the country (and the number is still rising exponentially) wants flash frozen tuna, the quality does tend to suffer, as it has been shown at this restaurant.
I just got a call from Andy the other day, as he was eating some Tuna Poke in Hawaii at his Choral conducting conference. I think that there are exceptions to the rule, especially for Hawaii, where you can get a tuna 15 hours out of the water in a Poke or ceviche form. There’s no way that they’d freeze that.