binglemumps

Dinner tonight is the chicken katsu + vegetable tempura bento box from Sushi Ko. Taking out bento boxes is always such a huge affair. First there’s the box that has the chicken, salad and california roll. Then the rice box, the soup container and the tempura box. AND three little containers for soy sauce, tempura sauce and katsu sauce. It always makes me feel like I’m having a ten course dinner, except that the dipping sauces are situated in the most undignified places, and the whole affair is so awkward because I just don’t have enough space on my desk.

Sushi Ko is my most frequented Japanese restaurant in the area. Which goes to follow that it’s probably my most frequented Japanese restaurant in the world (which sounds pretty impressive huh). The main reason I favour it so is that I still haven’t found a place that serves raw salmon as heavenly as the salmon they have here. I don’t know why that is because this isn’t supposed to be a particularly good restaurant. Chances are I just don’t really know what good salmon is.

Anyway, despite what the reviews on yelp.com might say, I still really like this place. The service has always been great. The bento boxes are pretty affordable and the portions are generous enough. The chicken katsu and saba shio (my usual bento choices) are really good, as is the vegetable tempura (which I’ve just tried for the first time). They don’t have as many specialty rolls as other places, but I think the regular rolls are pretty well done (for e.g. the aforementioned salmon, the hamachi and red snapper nigiri, and the spicy hotate roll).

My only complaint is that the one time I got the party sushi combination thing, about 1/3 of it consisted of california rolls. The california roll here isn’t bad or anything, but california rolls in general are just kinda cheap. Plus I’m not a huge fan of avocado. In fact, the free california roll that comes with my bento box is about to go uneaten, because I’m already full from the chocolate cupcakes I made this afternoon.

If you ever visit Berkeley for a day and feel like sushi, you probably won’t go to Sushi Ko. I’m practically the only person I know who even knows that this place exists, and the other people who do know seem none too impressed. So much so that I wouldn’t even confidently recommend it myself. What can I say, I guess I just haven’t had enough Japanese food to know any better, and you probably have higher standards than me.