Uni & Yuba (sea urchin & black bean milk skin)

by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
September 13, 2007

SOTO
357 6th Ave
(Washington Pl & W 4th St)
New York, NY 10014
212-414-3088

Josh Orzesky of Grub Street (NYMAG.com) recently asked me if there were any restaurants that truly blow me away. At the time he posed the question, I couldn’t think of any, which proved his point about my overly critical palate. Had he asked me the same question a week later though, my answer would have been quite different because that was when I had dinner at Soto. I was so wowed by this new Japanese restaurant in downtown Manhattan that I dreamt about it the night of my first visit. Hard to believe, but I had never (literally) dreamt about a meal in such detail before then.

I expected Soto’s focus to be sushi, so I was surprised to find so many other cold and warm items on the menu. I thought that these would be side dishes like an opening act to the main attraction, but upon reading through the menu carefully, and later tasting some of the offerings to verify, I found that most of the dishes were stunningly playful and delicious, making them stars in their own right. My companion and I settled on three of them: uni and yuba, minute-steamed tai, and miso soup with lobster and uni broth (to be served after the sushi course, so as to not ruin my palate). We would then move on to the twelve-piece omakase to test out the sushi.

Yuba, traditionally thin sheets of tofu skin made from soybean milk, is usually a light cream color, but this black bean version is light gray. It is delicately served, with the uni (sea urchin), in a small bowl of cold shiitake broth. The waitress handed us tiny spoons and asked that we please drink the broth for fear that we would let it go to waste. Being the uni fanatic that I am, I was delighted by its pairing with yuba, which, because it’s so light and smooth, is one of my favorite soy products, and the shiitake broth was perfectly savory and rooty to complete this union.

Chef-owner Sotohiro Kosugi is the head sushi chef and also in charge of the cold plates while his wife helms the kitchen and prepares the cooked menu items. I was pleased to find that she is as skilled as her husband in creating tantalizing treats. The minute-steamed tai came as four small pieces of New Zealand sea bream, quick steamed, so it was really still mostly raw, topped with ginger, scallion and oil. I thought it was absolutely ingenious to use traditional Chinese fish preparations — steamed with ginger, scallion, oil and soy sauce — for slightly cooked sashimi. My mouth continued to water even as I was eating it.

Sitting at the sushi bar, we didn’t quite understand why there was such a long pause after the first two dishes and the sushi, but it turned out that they had somehow lost our order. Service is indeed pleasant but not yet organized. The portions at Soto are very small and our meal should not have exceeded an hour and a half but it was extended to twice that at three hours due to disorganization. However, service snafus are not uncommon in new restaurants, and I have no doubt this gem of a place will be serving patrons seamlessly in no time. Personally, I was enjoying the food so much that I didn’t mind our long leisurely meal, but my companion, who had been starving from the get-go, felt like the dinner was torture as he was taunted by scrumptious-looking and fragrant food all around him, getting bits and pieces of it over a three hour period but never actually satisfying his hunger. :( I felt bad for him, but I must say the Japanese-portion sizes suite me perfectly.

The sushi was also delicious but small in portion. As it’s made, each piece of onigiri is placed one by one over the counter on your sushi tablet. It’s seasoned by the chef, so there is no need for soy sauce dipping, which is a good way to prevent those who don’t know how to eat sushi from ruining it. And if it’s any indication of the chef’s skills, twelve pieces came and went like they were six. I could have had another round. We added an order of the tar tare tuna roll — spicy tuna tartar with Asian pear, cucumber, avocado, sesame, pine nuts and scallion wrapped in white kelp. The roll was a gorgeous work of art with the unconventional white kelp skin instead of regular seaweed, but the pine nuts were overpowering, and the flavors in general just didn’t work together. The roll, however, was the only glitch during our meal, but honestly it would be a shame to waste your appetite on rolls at Soto anyway when the rest of the menu and the nigirizushi are so outstanding!

I’m ecstatic that there is a high caliber Japanese sushi restaurant around the corner from me right in Greenwich Village! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to treat it as a casual neighborhood joint as it is out of my daily dining budget. The prices are not unreasonable compared to top Midtown sushi restaurants, but it can’t be an everyday splurge for me. A drink or two with a dinner that leaves you reasonably full would range from $150 to $200 per person. I do plan to visit regularly, perhaps on a monthly basis, but in between, I can always dream about the food at Soto.

Also in Greenwich Village, Japanese, Sea Urchin, Seafood, Sushi