America's Best Sushi

Those who know me will be surprised to learn two things I should disclose up front: (a) that I didn't eat sushi until I was 21; and (b) that I think LA is the best sushi city I've ever visited. The first disclosure is unbelievable because of how often I now eat sushi and how much everyone knows I love it. Friends would be incredulous when hearing the latter statement because normally I sound like a representative of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and nobody in SF admits that anything is better in LA (even the weather!). However, LA has more customers demanding high quality sushi, so I think they have just solved a simple supply-and-demand problem. The best sushi place in the country, however, is not in Lalaland. It has become my "local" as those in England call their neighborhood stand-by pub.

To be clear, I haven't paid the $350/person price tag for Masa, Urasawa or any of their derivatives, because I simply don't think you need to pay that much to have amazingly high quality fish. The places below range from pretty-darn-cheap to reasonably-expensive, and as with all my rankings of food establishments, the quality per dollar is the dominant, defining criteria. However, in the case of a sushi-specific ranking, I have also balanced the following critical components: (a) pure fish quality (freshness, melt-in-your-mouth sensation, etc.); (b) diversity of selection and availability of rare fish types; (c) success with the simple nigiri or sashimi options, rather than fancy, new rolls; (d) facility with the knife by the sushi chef. I always try to sit at the sushi bar in front of the lead chef (if not the owner) in order to learn about his background, explore his supplier sources, and watch his magic.

Here are my favorite sushi places in the US:

1. Zushi Puzzle - San Francisco
2. Matsuhisa - Los Angeles
3. Kabuto - San Francisco (was #1 bar none before chef/owner Sachio Kojima left in 2005 for the Lake Shasta area, and I haven't tried his new place up there yet)
   
4. Sushi Nozawa - Los Angeles
5. "Secret Sushi" (unnamed) - San Francisco (Inner Sunset)
6. Katsu-Ya - Los Angeles
7. Asanebo - Los Angeles
   
8. Sushi Yasuda - New York
9. Tomoe Sushi - New York
10. Sushi Ran - Sausalito

I'd love to hear about new sushi places in cities where I will actually believe good sushi could exist, like Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Miami, DC, Chicago, Honolulu. (In other words, don't send me Boston recommendations; all of the sushi in Boston is awful if you've ever had sushi at one of the places listed above. A prominent newspaper once said that Oishii is the "best sushi in the Northeast" -- what an indictment of an entire region that represents! I can't believe that places in the Midwest other than Chicago could really have fish fresh enough, because I think there probably isn't a fresh fish market outside of Chicago large enough to justify the daily flights of fresh fish from the North Atlantic or Northern Pacific. I don't know of any good spots in Miami, though I'd guess there should be. The same goes for San Diego, where I've eaten a fair amount of sushi that just isn't in the same league as its Southern California rival city. I'm sure I've just missed some great spots there though; there's no reason they wouldn't have a few gems. And while I had high hopes for sushi in Hawaii, I ate at the top three places according to reviewers and locals, and all of them disappointed.)

One prerequisite for consideration on this list is that the sushi chef actually know what type of tuna he is serving. If he can't tell me that it's blue fin or big eye or something else, they're not playing the same game as the folks above. (A Bay Area favorite, Berkeley's Kirala, is an embarassing example of this scenario.) Ideally, they have multiple types, and a whole host of other options with granular specificity in the description and the origin.