October 1st is International
Sake Day, and in Austin, it
will yield a number of Sake
firsts thanks to local
brewer Texas Sake: "...the
introduction of the first
Sake kura (brewery) in the
USA in almost 15 years, the
first Texas kura, and the
first organic-only kura
outside of Japan," according
to their website.
Not only all of that, but
they're located in the heart
of Austin at 5501 North
Lamar Blvd. Find out more
details and get tickets for
their International Sake Day
celebration here: www.txsake.com
Now
do the sake dance!
Sushi
Meetups
Meetup.com has a few
Austin-area sushi meetups
(well, really only one).
It's Addicted
To Sushi.
Sushi Bars In
Transition
It took a
few years for the economic bust to
trickle down to Austin area sushi
bars, but trickle down it did, and
an epic number of sushi bars have
closed since the last edition of
Austin Sushi News (15 months ago).
Some compression was inevitable,
given the huge growth of sushi bars
in the mid-2000's, but,
surprisingly, some of the old sushi
bars have merely been replaced with
new ones. During that same
period, 6 new (or re-opened)
sushi bars have replaced some of the
closed ones for a net loss of only 4
sushi bars. Not too shabby.
The dead list:
Benihana
Hayashi
Kenobi
Korea Garden / KG Sushi Train
Koreana
Kyoto
Sushi Caliente
Sushi Den
Sushi Sake (downtown)
Yume Sushi Bar and Grill
In their place have risen some new
bars during the same 15 months:
AFin Modern Japanese Tapas (was KG
Sushi Train)
Bar Chi (was Sushi Sake downtown)
Cho Sushi
Nagoya Steak and Sushi
Nanami
Roll On Sushi
Japanese
"fun" foods are all the rage these
days. They are considerably cheaper
and generally easier to make than
sushi, yet still retain that special
Japanese flavor. A few weeks
ago, Osaka
Soul opened, selling
okonomiyaki (a sort of hybrid
pizza/pancake) out of a
trailer in the South First Food
Court at 603 W. Live Oak. There is
also Afin
(owned by the same folks who own Beluga)
where you can get Japanese Tapas
(izakaya - basically, Japanese
pub food). Finally,
there's yet another food trailer,
the Love
Ball Bus, at the Eastside
Drive-in selling takoyaki
(pancake balls filled with octopus
and other goodness).
Another New
Sushi Bar....
The friendly
folks who run the Sushi-a-Go-Go
sushi trailer are opening a
brick-and-mortar sushi
restaurant soon at 4917
Airport Boulevard. It will
be called Kome. Check out
their minimalist website
(under construction) here: www.kome-austin.com
You received this email
because you went on a drunken sake
binge and inadvertantly signed up
for this newsletter on austinsushi.com,
thinking it was really a free sushi
deal. If you'd like, you can unsubscribe.
The friendly
folks who run the 