Due to some recent experiences and newly acquired knowledge, I can no longer heartily recommend Sushi Saurus in Long Beach as a reasonably priced, authentic Japanese sushi place.
Here's what happened ...
A few weeks ago, Rawfishionado Brooke (who lived in Tokyo and has a very sophisticated palate), e-mailed me some alarming news:
"BTW - I went and had the unagi-don at Sushi Saurus last Wednesday. It sucked and so did the miso soup. :(OK, unagi bowl does not a sushi place make, but the quality of her meal sounded simply appalling.
"The unagi sauce was tooooo sweet and the miso soup tasted like dishwater water...same color too..."
When we visited Sushi Saurus in April to see how the new owner was running the place, Brooke and I were bowled over, so to speak, by the unagi bowl, and knew we'd be craving the meal in a bowl on a regular basis.
Apparently that was a one-time phenomenon; I believe that earlier unagi bowl was prepared for us by the owner-chef himself, after we requested it.
After Brooke's recent bad experience, I had to check it out for myself.
I decided to order unagi bowl takeout - better to try it in the privacy of my home, I thought.
In a nutshell, the experience revealed a lot about the new owner's attention to quality and lack of understanding of nuanced flavors:
1. The eel sauce wasn't too sweet as on Brooke's version, but it was really weird-looking AND weird-tasting: it was watery, looked like water colored with a bit of soy sauce, and had a chemical taste. NOT the right consistency or taste for unagi.
Fortunately for me, the unagi sauce was packaged separately for takeout, allowing me to put how much I want on it. So I pretty much ate the unagi almost unadorned, and it was decent.
2. My miso soup wasn't as bad as Brooke's dishwater soup - there was some salty flavor to it - but after a couple of sips, I threw it out. It was clearly some powdered insta-miso, with those little foamy fake tofu cubes in it - so unsatisfying.
3. And here's the biggest insult: the whole meal was WAY overpriced for what I got. I essentially paid $14 for a few pieces of unagi, the only worthwhile part of the whole meal.
Even the pickled vegetables and octopus salad were not good - either a chemical taste or bland.
Finally, I also didn't realize that the new owner-chef is Korean. I didn't notice this on that first visit in April, probably because it was so busy and a Japanese sushi chef was serving us.
But on the night I ordered the unagi bowl to go, the place was nearly empty and the chef-owner was behind the sushi bar and conversing in KOREAN to his female waitresses.
This might explain the weird unagi sauce, AND the fact that when I called in my order and said I wanted "unagi don," the waitress didn't seem to understand me.
"Unagi roll?" she asked.
"No, unagi DON ... an unagi bowl," I said.
(Pause) "Ohhh, OK."
So I can not justify endorsing a place that isn't authentically Japanese - and overpriced and mediocre on top of it.
It's an average, OK place if you're not seeking any out-of-this-world, memorable food.
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