Sushi has become so popular that you can find a decent sushi bar in lots of neighborhoods. It’s rare, though, to find a place that flies in fish from Japan and reminds you with every slice of sashimi, every roll, that sushi-making is an art.
The lakefront restaurant is so perpetually packed that if you don’t see a line out the door on a weekend night, you can assume it’s closed. The blond-wood room abounds in good cheer, thanks to waitresses both gracious and efficient. When diners aren’t gazing out at Lake Kittamaqundi, they’re studying the sushi bar, where chef/owner King Lin and his team of cooks assemble the area’s most inventive rolls.
What to get: Salted edamame; Snowball, an Old Bay-dusted mound of minced shrimp; sunomono, a lightly pickled dish of fish and cucumbers; aji three ways, a showstopping presentation of sashimi and nigiri of horse mackerel (the kitchen then fries the carcass until it crunches like potato chips); dragon roll topped with lobster; Neptune Garden roll of shrimp, crab, and avocado bound in lettuce; sashimi of scallop, yellowtail, salmon, and mackerel.
Open Monday through Saturday for lunch and dinner. Moderate to expensive.
Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
