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