Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Sticky Rice is a new H Street restaurant here in DC. It has its origins in Richmond, VA at the original location. It seems to have a huge following with kids who went to college around Richmond.

Sticky Rice is the second closest sushi shop near boyfriend’s house and down the street from Joe Englert’s hip locales, Rock & Roll Hotel and The Argonaut where my friends work.

Boyfriend and I were hoping to get in on their pre-opening evenings when they were trying to work the kinks out, but alas, we couldn’t get an invitation. So we waited a respectable amount of time after their official opening in late May and headed there on a week night early in the week in late July.

The night before we had dinner, we were there after a show at R&R Hotel for a Bucket of Tots and their Tot Sauce, having been warned by a friend that they don’t have sushi after hours, just drinks and tater tots. My though, it was very good drunk food and a good time. The Tot Sauce was spicy-licious! They give you a little pail of tater tots, perfectly crisp without being soggy or fishy (important from a place that makes tempura). They also gave you a ranch sauce for dipping, but forgo the ranch and ask for two containers of the Tot Sauce. It’s got a good bite to go with your beer.

The next evening we went back for a real sushi dinner. I’d perused the menu before and I was kind of excited about it. But once I was in the restaurant I was seated facing a picture of a woman’s bare bum. For some reason, on that particular night, I found it unsettling to stare at this picture, but I didn’t ask boyfriend to switch seats. Mistake on my part.

The menu looks fantastic, but there was cream cheese in every special fried roll. Boyfriend remarked that I seem to be a sushi snob in favor of traditionalism. In my defense, I told him that sushi to me is comfort food. Back in the day, Pop and I would eat 50 pc trays together leaving only a few bits for my mom. Before his stroke, my folks ate out all the time and so the sushi chefs would often produce special treats just for us. I’ve had some really good stuff so I think I am qualified to say what’s good, what’s fresh, and what’s not. (Live squid counts as fresh, right?)

I’m 100% genetically Asian. This means I’m lactose intolerant and I have to choose carefully when I feel like being gassy. Thus I get irritated when all the fancy and appealing rolls use dairy. The other thing I find suspicious about this is that cream cheese a cheap way to get good mouth-feel on substandard oily fishes like salmon and mackerel. I’d like to judge the food without the mucousy feeling that dairy products leave in the mouth. ick. I suspect the cheese protects the fish from the heat of the deep fry, but still did all three available options have to have it?

The Sticky Balls dish was really good. We liked those a lot. We also ordered a lot of nigiri, including my personal trifecta, salmon, mackerel and yellowtail (Sake, Saba, Hamachi). These three fish are really essential for me. I use them as my baseline to judge all sushi restaurants. Therefore it was really disappointing that they forgot the sake when they brought our platter. There was extra tuna on the plate and I hate maguro. There’s something unpleasant about its texture and the fact that it’s not oily the way toro is. The waitress acknowledged the error on our plate and brought out two pieces of sake. But that’s when things went really far downhill for me.

The sushi rice had stuff in it. Edible stuff mind you, but there was a little flake of bonito or tempura breading and a piece of scallion stuck to the rice. WOW. OH WOW. This tells me the sushi chefs aren’t keeping their work place clean. BAD SIGN. In all my years of eating in roach-infested dive sushi joints in San Francisco (I will always love you WeBeSushi, both locations. $10 sushi dinners, what’s not to love? OMG is the Geary location closed?), never has this happened to me. I really don’t know what to think. The fish wasn’t thrilling me. It wasn’t crazy huge slices like at Ace Wasabi’s in San Francisco (Another annoying yuppie hipster joint, but g-ddamn the nigiri was huge, fresh and sublime). Nor was it it super eyes-rolling-back-in-head orgasmically great like Kaz Sushi in DC. ($14 Norwegian toro and my god that was delicious.) It was ok fish. The kind of fish I could eat once every other week because it’s close to home.

The service was a little slow on both nights we went, the fish not that fabulous, but I certainly will eat there again for an afterhours snack that rocks and give it another try for their cooked entrees.

Damn. I forgot how much it cost because boyfriend picked up the tab. All I remember was that it was not cheap and we ate too much, i.e. over ordered in our enthusiasm to try the place. I am sure you could walk out of there for less than we did. I think the check with tip, 2 beers for boyfriend, none for me, was close to $70.

Final nitpick point: This is **REALLY** picky though. They have chopsticks for **Chinese restaurants** rather than Japanese ones. You can tell by the wrapper. Not a big deal, but it was the super cheap round kind that roll off the un-level tabletop. Since they don’t provide chopstick rests, I’d really appreciate it if they had squared off chopsticks. (You know, the kind you pull apart.) (FWIW, boyfriend thinks I’m crazy to do origami and make a rest out of the paper wrapper, but there are times when it matters and not just occupying yourself while you wait.)

Final good point: The decor is awesome there, even if I don’t like one of the paintings. I especially love the origami paper decoupage on the walls of the upstairs bathroom.