Recently, I’ve eaten at two of the various sushi restaurants on Cleo‘s list: Shuko, with which I’m quite familiar and which, to my mind, is the best sushi restaurant I’ve ever eaten at, and Sushi Yasuda, which was delicious but in a completely different league. Shuko is absurdly expensive; two people can’t really escape having spent less than $800. At Sushi Yasuda, the total bill plus tip was $500. The lighting at Yasuda is awful—bright, almost fluorescent, industrial. Shuko, on the other hand, is an intimate, sexy space. Whereas at Yasuda, I felt like one among many customers, at Shuko, every time I go, I feel like a guest, in the best sense of the word.
Cleo keeps a checklist of sushi restaurants. She’s been (taken) to lots of them and has a few remaining. I don’t know how she compiled the list, but I’m working from it, for no reason other than that I’m lazy. I’ll be curious to see how I feel about the various places as I march my way through them.
Tonight, I’ll eat at Sushi on Jones. The price point seems closer to that of Yasuda than to that of Shuko, for which I’m grateful.
Hopefully, the atmosphere is a little less garish.