The Drunken Fish ... Not Nearly Drunk Enough

Friday, October 31st - Trick or Treat; Man, We're Beat; Give us Lots of Fish to Eat!

Here's how it started:

Halloween.

This year it fell on a Friday. I don't know what rush-hour traffic is like elsewhere; I'm sure it has to be worse in metropolitan areas larger than Stinktown, but then again maybe not. Those of you who live in large cities are probably fortunate enough to have mass transit systems that actually extend to the suburbs.

Not so Stinktown.

We have a light rail system that pretty much does nothing to relieve commuter traffic congestion. To quote those two funny looking Irish caricatures from the Guinness commercials, "BRILLIANT!!!"

What is my effing point?

Westbound traffic coming out of St. Louis is bad on any given evening ... rush-hour typically gets started around 3PM and extends past 6PM. Westbound traffic on Friday evenings is twice as bad as during the rest of the week. Westbound traffic on Halloween which just happens to fall on a Friday ... welcome to the tenth level of hell.

This called for serious action. While Jay and I assumed that all the neighborhood kids would be annoyed at having one less house to raid for free candy, there was no way either of us were going to spend two hours trying to get home to distribute brightly wrapped agents of tooth decay when we could just meet somewhere for a quiet, tasty dinner.

And thus began the search for a restaurant that was easy for both of us to reach from our respective places of employment and which wouldn't result in too long a drive home once the traffic cleared up. We had such great sushi experiences while vacationing at WDW that we decided to try a Stinktown sushi restaurant. Our first choice, a place called Tsunami, opened about a year ago and had received great reviews - a friend of mine from work also thought it was a pretty good establishment and she's a reliable restaurant referral source. In addition, Tsunami had a really fun menu with items like Squid Vicious and Marilyn Monroll ... it seemed like a tasty, playful place for us to gobble fish and we were really looking forward to dining there.

Unfortunately we found out a few days ago that Tsunami had closed its doors.

D'OH! D'OH! D'OH!

Time to fall back on our second choice - an establishment called The Drunken Fish. They have three locations in St. Louis - Westport; Central West End; and Laclede's Landing - and have received consistently good reviews from people who supposedly know of that they eat and speak. Two friends of mine have also dined there and they both said it was a pretty good sushi place. Alrighty then - Drunken Fish it is!

Jay and I met up at Westport Plaza on Friday evening and made our way to the restaurant, located inside an office building. Truthfully Drunken Fish was not so much a restaurant as it was a bar with a small dance floor and a fair number of tables. The interior was dim and a bit dingy - I notice things sometimes that I'd probably be happier not noticing, but it's what I do - there were areas where paint was chipping and peeling off the walls and the carpet was threadbare and stained in some places. And the bathrooms weren't even inside the restaurant, but located in a long, dim hallway adjacent to the rear of the establishment. The only thing I have to say about the bathrooms is this: BLEARRRRRRRRGHHHHHH!!!

There was just one way to obliterate the squeamishness I felt about the noticeable lack of tenant improvements ... order a drink! Drunken Fish actually had a pretty extensive drink menu along with a good selection of Sake - I opted for something I've enjoyed tremendously at other establishments: a Key Lime Pie martini. In retrospect I should have tried something new because it was the worst version of this drink that I've ever had the misfortune to be served. For starters, where was the graham cracker pie crust that should have rimmed my glass? Where was the wonderful sweet-tart combination that I've come to expect? Where was the creamy deliciousness that skillfully masks the drink's alcohol content so that I keep ordering more until I stand up too suddenly only to discover that I'm brunk?

Gone, all gone!

Final verdict?

This drink tasted like frothy, milk-tinged cat piss.

I'm choking it down!

While our service wasn't bad it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been. The serving staff was all very young and were far more interested in the costumes they had all donned for Halloween than with providing attentive, helpful service. When I told our waitress just how unsatisfactory my drink was her response was a surprised, "Really?"

And no, I did not use the words frothy cat piss with her when I expressed distaste for my martini.

Jay, once again, displayed his drink-ordering smarts and chose a Kirin Itchy-Bunny ... the 22-ounce thank-gawd-it's-Friday serving size.

Mmmm, beer!

A few weeks ago Jay and I had a very enjoyable dinner at Tokyo Dining (Epcot) with a DIS-board friend and her hubby. They ordered Edamame as an appetizer and shared it with us and I was much surprised by just how tasty this dish was. So in a post-vacation tribute to Erica and Lionel we ordered some Edamame ourselves this evening and toasted their health before sucking soybean pods.

Edamame ...

We really enjoyed our lightly boiled baby soybean pods but I thought there was too much salt, especially as we made our way to the bottom of the pod pile. These are mucho fun to eat ... you use your teeth to squeeze the beans out of the pod which can result in much random squirting of table mates. The pods are then discarded as worthless.

Our first order of sushi included three selections of Nigiri, which is my favorite, and two sushi rolls. Before I tell you about the tasty fish, look at the cool serving dishes they brought out ... the yin and yang design was very cool!

Very nice!

OK, let's talk some fish. As I mentioned earlier, I like nigiri sushi best of all; it's simple and flavorful. I don't even use wasabi or ginger or soy sauce ... I just like the fish and the rice. Our first batch included salmon, hamachi, and crab in that order from left to right in the picture below.

Eat them up - good!

My own little nigiri plate ...


Of these three choices the hamachi (young yellowtail) was the best - light and sweet, it practically melted in my mouth. The salmon was pretty good and had a nice flavor, but it was a bit stringy and that was disappointing. I expected our crab nigiri to be really tasty based on the experience we had in Florida at Wolfgang Puck's sushi joint, but this was nasty. The crab should have been sweet and tender, instead it tasted very fishy and was salty and chewy. Ick, ick ick!

Our first two sushi rolls were the Drunken Fish Roll - Shrimp Tempura, Japanese Mayo, and Asparagus topped with Tuna, Sprouts, Masago, Japanese Mayo, Tempura Crumbs, and Eel Sauce (8 total pieces); and the So Roll - White Tuna, Crab, Carrots, and Scallions topped with Sprouts, Masago, Eel and Ponzu Sauces (5 pieces served in a martini glass).

See the pretty pictures below ... The So Roll is nicely arranged in the martini glass and the Drunken Fish Roll is arranged on the plate at the base of the glass.

See the pretty fishies?!

I preferred the Drunken Fish Roll to the So Roll; for one thing it was easier to eat but I also thought it tasted better even though they went overboard on the sauces. Jay just reminded me that the drunken roll actually had some crispiness to it due to the shrimp tempura component. And interestingly enough, the roll in a glass was served warm with no rice. They were both good, but if you like a more traditional sushi presentation you should definitely go with the tipsy fish. Just for fun, Masago, which was listed as an ingredient for almost everything on the menu, is Japanese for Capelin Roe; it's the tiny little orange fish eggs that were sprinkled over the top of each roll we ordered. They were a lovely bright orange color and had a very mild flavor.

When our waitress came back and asked if we were ready for dessert we shocked her by ordering more sushi. Her response once she saw our second order was, "Wow! You guys are really hungry!"

Bwaahahahahahahaaaa!! That's waitress speak for "You two are P-I-G-S ... pigs!"

I also took advantage of her appearance at our table to order another drink, opting for something new this time with the rationale that nothing could possibly be as bad as the martini that I'd just forced myself to consume unless I went back to the bathroom and lapped water out of the toilet.

The Sake Razz sounded like it might be good: Sake, Vodka, Stoli Razz, Pineapple and Cranberry Juices, served chilled. I requested that the bartender omit the pineapple and here's the result:

Razz-tastic!!

Yes, this was much much better. I wish I'd started the evening with this ... I think I would have been happier and I'm sure my gimpie leg would have bothered me less because I wouldn't have been feeling any pain at all after a couple of these babies.

OK, time for the second round of sushi which included two more nigiri selections and three more rolls.

Damn!

Our waitress was right ... we are pigs!

The entire order was presented on one large platter, so just to guide you around the first picture posted below, here's what we ordered: Tuna and Yellowtail Nigiri (middle of the plate); California Roll (bottom of plate); White Tiger Roll (lined up along both sides); and Red Dragon Roll (top of plate with red and yellowish squiggly sauces).

More sushi? Don't mind if we do!

And another picture of our sushi platter ... it's just been flipped so that the Dragon Roll is in the forefront.

Poison ... poison ... Tasty Fish!


To start with, the Tuna nigiri (dark red) was pretty tasty ... a little stringier than we're accustomed to but it had a decent flavor. I couldn't bring myself to eat the Yellowtail (pale pink) which I normally enjoy. The fish just didn't look visually appealing to me so Jay had to eat both pieces; he said they tasted fine but I thought they looked disgusting.

The California Roll - made with Crab, Cucumber, and Avocado, it was sprinkled with Sesame Seeds and Masago (8 pieces). It was good but not the best CA roll we've ever had.

The White Tiger Roll - made with Calamari Tempura, Avocado, Crab, and Masago, it was topped with White Tuna, Eel Sauce and Spicy Mayo (8 pieces). I don't like calamari so I didn't try this one; lemme check with the hubba and get his thoughts.

Jay's thoughts: It was very tasty with a nice spice; the squid was not too pronounced so picky people like Brenda probably would like it; or they'd at least be able to try one piece without being completely repulsed.

The Red Dragon Roll - a friend of mine suggested earlier in the day that we try this one and her culinary advice is usually pretty reliable. This roll included Crab and Asparagus and was topped with Spicy Tuna, Green Onion, Spicy Sauce, Japanese Mayo, Masago, and Tempura Crumbs (8 pieces). This was definitely a yummy choice - I thought it was overwhelmed by too much sauce and it was a tad spicy for my preference, but it was still very good.

Some general observations I'd like to share before I close this out:

The sushi at Drunken Fish was good, but not great. Jay and I are not sushi experts by any stretch of the imagination and we don't pretend to be, but we've been fortunate to eat at some very good restaurants with uber-fresh ingredients and I think it's going to be very difficult for us to find a Stinktown sushi joint that measures up to what we now expect. One of the suckiest things about being landlocked is that obtaining really fresh fish is a near impossibility, and there is a cynical part of me that wonders if those rolls we ordered came loaded with so much sauce to hide the fact that the ingredients weren't as fresh as they should have been.

As I stated earlier, I think that this Drunken Fish location suffers from being a bar more than a restaurant - I can't speak to the other two locations but this one seems to have a split personality issue to deal with. And because it's a bar environment, Jay and I were reminded that we are two of the least trendy people you'll never meet. As we were leaving I told Jay that I felt like Grandpa Simpson: "I used to be with it, and then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what is it seems weird and scary to me."

No doubt that feeling was exacerbated by the decidedly bizarre techo-rave music blaring from the restaurant's speaker system all night. How does rave music contribute to the ambiance at a sushi joint? Jay and I fully expected the AT&T Techno Twins, Claude and Veter, to burst from the kitchen with their boom box and rhythmic gymnastic ribbon at any moment.

We're glad we tried something new and it wasn't a bad experience, but certainly it wasn't impressive enough for us to want to visit again. There is another sushi place in Stinktown that's been getting very good reviews and we think we'll probably give it a try early next year.

Thanks for reading - I hope you enjoyed our fish tale!