Asian Bistro, Alexandria, VA.

I think the past week I have learned an important lesson, take mass transit if you’re going to enjoy sushi in the cities. My friend had a craving for sushi and I was very willing to join in. Hilton Honor’s has a points program, wherever you eat you can get dining points. Of course Asian Bistro was not part of the Hilton program anymore, but I still wanted to check it out.

First of all if you want to go to Asian Bistro on King Street, just park somewhere off the road and walk. It’ll save you the agony of trying to find parking and stopping every 5 feet at a stop light. This is primary the reason why I have never tried to go to a sushi place in Alexandria when I work. King Street is so annoying!

Like many of the places in Olde Town Alexandria, this restaurant is cozy and has a relaxed environment. They serve a variety of Asian dishes, so if your friends want Asian food they won’t be fighting over what kind. In addition to sushi they offer Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Korean.

But we grabbed the sushi menu as soon as we sat down. They have a lot of specialty rolls. If you’re a vegetarian they offer some unique choices including tomato basil roll. Many of the rolls sounded really cool, but a good number of them had cream cheese in them. My friend doesn’t like too much cream cheese.

We settled on salmon nigri, shrimp tempura roll, spicy lobster roll, spicy tuna roll, and fried calamari for appetizer. The fried calamari was awesome, the dipping sauce was kind of boring, but it started to grow on me the more I ate it. As soon as we were finished with the calamari our sushi was ready.

I have to say the presentation was gorgeous. The first thing I grabbed was the salmon. Yum! It melted in your mouth. The sushi rice –you know me and my rice- was great!

Now the rolls. The spicy tuna was good. The shrimp tempura was fantanstic. The sauce they drizzled on top was sort of like eel sauce, but sweeter than I’ve tasted. So I’m going to guess that they made it themselves. It almost tasted like an infusion of eel sauce and tempura sauce.

My friend and I both agreed the spicy lobster was a bit of a disappointment. The roll itself was good, but the sauces they placed on the roll overwhelmed the roll. One of the sauces was chirachi and the other was like a spicy mayo. Both the sauces made it kind of a mess.

Overall I have to say this is one of my new favorite places. I’d definitely go again if I was craving sushi in Alexandria.

Grade: A

Hikaru Sushi Bar, Arlington, VA

No pics. Camera went crazy. If I can fix it I'll post later.

I had gotten a living social deal and so I ventured to Washington, D.C. I had plans to find a sushi place nearby. The sushi place that I had originally plugged in was closed. Then the second place there weren’t any parking spaces. Then I figured Arlington, VA is usually better to navigate anyhow. Plus I wanted to try the cupcake place Crumbs.

I drove into Arlington and being afraid I couldn’t find a parking spot I zoomed into the first free lot I could find. There was a farmer’s market going on so I wandered around before hiking to Crumbs.

I found a small sushi place almost immediately: Hikara Sushi Place on 2200 Wilson Rd, Arlington, VA. The place is cute. I think it’s near the courthouse so it probably gets busy.

When I order I usually get an order of nigiri, a regular roll, and a specialty roll. But today I saw the sushi bento box and I figure I give it a try. I got 5 pieces of sushi, 4 dumplings, steamed rice, and a California roll.

When I got my sushi my heart fell. Normally saba (mackerel) is not a type of sushi that most places put in your sushi box. I hate saba. So freaking fishy and blah. So of course it was the first thing I ate. After I got the bad taste out of my mouth I moved on to the better fishes.

Now the nigiri was a little small. So small it was almost cute. It tasted fine. It wasn’t the best tasting sushi I ever had. Now the dumplings were pretty freaking good. Another thing that tasted good was their miso soup. I haven’t finished a whole bowl of miso soup in a long time.

So overall I say the sushi was average tasting. It was funny how different a person’s perception can be. The ladies who sat next to be were raving about the sushi. I found it to be average.

Grade: C