"Choice" was the rule as the AustinSushi.com team descended on Sushi Zushi Monday night. With waiters sporting "Sushi is Going Weird" t-shirts (a riff on the "Keep Austin Weird" non-slogan), the sushi bar seemed upbeat. This is the 6th location for the San Antonio-based sushi bar chain and the 1st Austin location (4 San Antonio locations and 1 in Dallas).

With a menu sporting around 200 items, you can pretty much have it your way, and, even if many of the choices have cream cheese or mayonnaise (not my favorites), you can easily add or subtract ingredients from any of their 100 or so custom and traditional sushi rolls. They even provide a handy pricing guide on the menu for making those changes, including the option to tempura deep fry any roll.

Ambiance-wise, the upscale-ish operation has the feel of a mature sushi bar with a fair amount of table/booth seating, and a semi-private room that seats around 30. A separate take-out/delivery entrance and register (an Austin first for a sushi bar?) should speed the handling of those orders without interrupting the flow of traffic to the main sushi bar. They've also done an interesting job of automating things by letting people order takeout online and make table reservations via OpenTable.com.

The sushi? It was decent, but doesn't have the flair of an Uchi or Musashino. The prices were in line with the more upscale downtown sushi bars. I'm used to sushi chefs having difficultly understanding my nasally midwestern American accent, but I think this may be the first time that all the sushi chefs were Hispanic. The times, they are a-changin'.....

Sushi Zushi
1611 W. 5th Street (just East of Mopac)
(512) 474-7000

In case you haven't heard, the old 14,000 square foot Salvation Army location in the Lamar Plaza shopping center (home of the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar) will soon become The Palace, complete with retro bowling alley and extensive karaoke facilities. From the recent Austin Chronicle article:

[Alamo Creative Director] Henri Mazza and I [Alamo owner Tim League] are both absolutely obsessed with karaoke, and I promise you we are going to have the most badass private karaoke rooms in town. Each of the rooms will be themed to a different style of music, so there'll be a punk room, a metal room, what have you, all of them with a superhuge song selection.

You can tell by my hip use of jargon (e.g. "Bull") that I've got a freshly minted business degree of some sort and am preparing to create a publicly traded company that will eventually tailspin itself into a nugatory enterprise. Yes, nugatory.

Until then, we can all count on one thing: more sushi in Austin. Case in point: a recent memo from the owners of swanky Piranha Sushi indicating that they are moving full throttle on their new 207 San Jacinto location. They even have a help-wanted Craigslist ad (screen capture). Estimated opening: end of Summer, 2009.

There are also details now on the prophesized North Austin Uchi location. It will be named Uchiko and will reside in the old Seton Medical building at 4200 N. Lamar which will be remodeled by Michael Hsu. Estimated opening: Spring, 2010.

Austin is selling sushi at both the top and bottom ends of the price spectrum, but the pricey sushi bars are clearly being fueled by the wave of immigrants that came to Austin in the past 3-4 years (especially last year when census reports show that Austin was the #1 or #2 fastest-growing metro area in the country, depending on how you slice the stats). By immigrants, of course, I mean Californians who have sold their over-priced real estate and are now sitting on too much extra cash.

It's not clear who came up with this concept, but if there's a Facebook page about it, it MUST be true, right? So, tomorrow (Thursday, June 18th) is International Sushi Day, and you are all hereby directed to consume sushi.

It's been almost exactly five years since the unpleasantness, and, I have to say, that Silhouette Sushi is now truly back, and in a good way. More laid back than Kenichi or Uchi, Silhouette has good sushi, a convenient Congress Avenue location (718 N. Congress Ave), and even the occasional DJ.

To top things off, on February 2nd, they opened up downtown Austin's only karaoke club, directly upstairs from Silhouette, named Silhouette KTV (Here's the announcement from their blog). These private karaoke rooms are very well-appointed with giant flat-screen TVs, two mics, and modern black furniture. There's even sake, soju, and general booze service for the rooms. Plus, by showing your Silhouette sushi receipt, you automatically get ONE FREE HOUR of karoake. Woot! [call KTV to make sure the free karaoke deal is still happening (512) 477-3311]

Ladies should also consider stopping by on Tuesday, April 7th, from 8pm to midnite, when Silhouette will have another of their semi-regular Ganso Lady's Nights featuring free champagne every hour, bang trims, happy hour specials for ladies, music and more. Check out their weekly happy hour menu here, including their "reverse" (late nite) happy hour on Saturday night from 11pm to 1:30am.

What's doing well in the current economy? Just about anything that's cheap. Case in point -- buffets! There's nothing more deeply American than a gluttonous all-you-can-eat buffet. And, I think all Americans need to rally around our traditions during this troubled time and just pig-out. Don't let the down economy keep you from that third or fourth belt-loosening trip to the buffet! Austin's got two new additions to the sushi landscape that are perfect for such feasting, and at everyday low, low prices.

Just North of Austin in Georgetown, Texas is the Ichiban Sushi Buffet located at 1103 Rivery Blvd, suite 210. Go stuff yourself!

Now, if you'd like some some novelty in your porcine pig-out, consider the newly renovated Korea Garden which now offers a conveyor belt buffet (called kaiten-zushi) that is common in Japan's low-cost sushi joints. Korea Garden, by the way, has changed it's name to "K.G. Sushi Train" (the "KG" stands for "Korea Garden," I suppose). The "train" is a conveyor belt, not a train. But what's important here are their prices which definitely ranks it as some of the most affordable sushi in Austin.

Quality Seafood has changed a lot since the days when it supplied 99% of all the seafood to Austin area restaurants and grocery stores. It still has its wholesale seafood business, but it's now a live music venue with some rather fun weekly events. In particular, Wednesday night is Sushi Night and there's usually live music to go along with that.

This is, perhaps, a strange category for this fish-laden Austin Sushi News report, but, especially in this age of over-fishing and mercury contamination, there is a place for our vegan brethren. And, I must say that, it's pretty hard to find high-quality vegan food in Austin. Sure, I dig Casa De Luz and Veggie Heaven on occasion, but the recently opened Daily Juice Cafe at 45th and Duval has an amazing vegan sushi roll on their menu called the Daily Sushi. The roll consists of "pumpkinseed pesto, coconut strips, shredded carrots, avocado, red bell pepper, and sprouts rolled in a crisp nori sheet and served with ginger-wasabi dipping sauce." Now that's good eatin' !

Bad economic times never seem to stop the flow of sushi into our faces, and, notwithstanding the proportions of this economic bust, some new sushi is on its way.

More than two years after we first announced their opening, and just four months after they were padlocked, the second Sushi Sake location -- which is called Yu Sushi Izagaya -- is set to open on December 5th at 206 Colorado Street. We're really hoping they have their web site up by then.

On the forthcoming list is Piranha Killer Sushi, a swank chain out of Arlington, Texas, that is "leasing 3,000 square feet at 207 San Jacinto St, the building just north of P.F. Chang’s on the corner of Third Street," according to the Austin Business Journal.

The AustinSushi.com team took a stroll over to Maki, the latest spin on "fast" Japanese food, and was mightily impressed by this new Austin operation. They are, essentially, a roll-your-own sushi roll bar where you walk up to a counter, point at the ingredients you want, and the person behind the counter (not a sushi chef) makes the requested roll. In order to speed up the delivery time and lower employee costs, they utilize a sushi robot, specifically the Audio-Technica ASM 860, that spreads the rice onto the nori. This allows for relatively unskilled labor to complete the roll.
The place has a noveau fresh ambiance with a pleasant lime green color and spiffy graphics on the wall. It's definitely "fast" food and not a sushi bar, but still a great place to get a sushi fix when you need something fast that's well-prepared.