They do an excellent job. I could go on and on, but it almost seems a crime to say too much about high end sushi. Done right, it is the most elegant food you will experience. Spare, simple, only the lightest touch of art to make it as enticing as anything you will see in front of you. Legend has it the Emperor would stare at and contemplate a sushi feast then wave it away as too beautiful to eat. I do know that feeling of appreciation, but I’ve yet to send any sushi away.
Since I was headed down to NO, I contacted some friends to see what they were up to and an old neighbor of mine was free to share some sushi and a good bit of sake and Sapporo. I hadn’t intended to get a pitcher of Sapporo–I thought I had ordered one of the 22 oz bottles, but I wasn’t going to turn it down when the server brought it to the table.
I got there a little before my friend did. So I was free to take a number of photos of the excellent little layout. Haiku has a separate bar at the front of the space beside a nice patio. The sushi bar and more seating and the hot kitchen are at the rear of the building. They have a cool little lamp that shines the logo down on the sidewalk to catch the attention of anyone walking by, and the shop is in a section of Magazine where the foot traffic is constant and heavy.
It had been a while since my neighbor and I had seen each other so we had a nice long talk about life, love, work and self care. Work out strategies, tai chi, healthy eating, and healthy attitude. Inevitably talk drifted to those who were no longer with us, either by service, misfortune, crime, disease, or their own hand. I’m pretty sure I shared my thoughts on how absolutely maudlin the holiday season could become either despite of or because of all the glitter and commercialism. Even the music is tainted with an undercurrent of sadness and missed loved ones. The easy explanation is the anguish of the great wars and how many were lost colliding with a militarized Hollywood serving the country as a propaganda machine to drive the war and war bond effort in the 40s. 1942 is when Bing Crosby first sang White Christmas. But you also have to consider the legacy of Yule and the winter solstice, and how maybe those midwinter feasts were driven by chowing down on the last of the uncured provisions before they went bad. We can only wonder whether those times birthed the current obsession with out with the old, in with the new and the introspection and self criticism and drive for self improvement packaged in the New Year’s Resolution trope or if it is, in fact, simply commercialism. We can only hope that our thinking moves on toward making it a time of self-care and self-understanding. And maybe even a reexamination of those we’ve lost by their own hand. It’s not all driven by bitter depression and loneliness. I’m sure we all know at least one loss characterized by ‘Fuck this. I’m out.’ And yes, I’m aware that my own when in doubt, power out strategy has its own costs. It would seem a good time to segue into Bourdain, but it isn’t. Not yet. More sushi, please. Maybe some spicy scallop nigiri?
My first sushi experience was out in LA. A friend’s sister took me along as her boy toy for a business trip and when we hit the sushi bar it seemed she was trying to intimidate me with the raw fish. I grew up eating raw oysters so sushi didn’t prove much of a challenge for me, in fact, I loved the new flavors and textures and just went wild trying everything on her dime and didn’t slow down until I hit the squid served in its own ink. That was an acquired taste for sure. But I loved the uni and tobiko and quail eggs and everything else she threw at me. To me, fresh uni tastes like life itself, the sun the sky the ocean all in one bite. When I went back on my own to live and work in LA, I got a job at the Famous Enterprise Fish Company on Kinney Street in Santa Monica. We were just a couple of blocks off the beach and the concept was as simple as sushi. We had an exhibition kitchen with two cast iron pits filled with mesquite hardwood and we grilled everything. Shark, swordfish, halibut, tuna, rainbow trout, hamachi, bay snapper, king crab and lobster and snowcrab, calamari steaks panéed and topped with avocado and tomatillo sauce. I even had a chat with Paul Newman once about what we had available. while I was working the grill. Nice guy. Very real. We made a mean cioppino as well, but the jambalaya I made every Friday night paid for me and then some. Even if I had to make it with polish sausage and toss in some shrimp and fish to make it much more paella-like than jambalaya-like it worked for the owners. So every now and then the bosses would take me with them to Senba Sushi on Oceanfront Walk in Venice not far from Muscle Beach. That place was magnificent but there was very little English spoken there. Both of the bosses spoke Japanese and would carry on with the experts behind the bar at length. Those chefs would toss live sea urchin in the air and pop it with their yanagibas to crack it open like an egg and release the fresh uni. They would show you a whole flounder and then carve it into a delicate flower style sashimi presentation and later in the meal bring you the backbone fried tempura style with ponzu sauce. It was a hole in the wall joint, the kind I like best. If you rent the Akroyd/Hanks version of Dragnet you can catch a glimpse of Senba when the car blows up during the beach scene. Well here’s a photo of Samantha Fish, which is the reason why I went down to NO Saturday. She was playing at the Cigar Box Guitar Festival at Frenchman Theater with Jonathon “Boogie” Long. She is a fantastic blues lead guitarist/singer and she just created her own record label Wild Heart Records and signed Boogie as her first artist. Thank god for Guitar Hero and Xena: Warrior Princess and anything else that might have inspired little girls to pick up a guitar and play. I can remember visiting a friend a while back and watching his three daughters rock out to Slow Ride by Foghat and thinking at the time that our music was never going to go away. If you get a chance, you should definitely check her out.
