Sushi omakase at Sushi Tomi

Tuesday was Chinese Valentine's Day, so my boyfriend took me out for fancy sushi!

Our appetizer was beef tataki--kind of like a seared beef sashimi--with red onions. The beef was very, very tender, but because it's half seared and half raw, it can get a little gamey. The red onions were probably run under hot water, because it was very mild. The beef comes with a yuzu-shoyu type sauce, which I wish the onions were dressed in, because they felt a little "separated" from the rest of the dish. But, overall, the dish was very well-balanced and was acidic enough to still be light.

We ordered the sushi omakase, which is a chef's selection of onigiri. The only other sushi omakase I've had was at Sushi Sam's in San Mateo, so that's what I'm comparing it to.

We got a good mix of fatty and lean fish, like toro (fatty tuna), salmon, shrimp, and uni (sea urchin). However, I wish our server had told us what each fish was, because there are only a few that we could recognize.

At Sushi Sam's, all the sushi is already seasoned and "done" for you--for example, some of the fatty fish comes with yuzu rice--and they ask you to not eat it with additional soy sauce and wasabi, which prevents you from ruining the flavor of the fish with the wrong seasoning. At Tomi, on the other hand, all the fish just comes with plain sushi rice and wasabi, so you season it to your taste--which I think some people would like, because a complaint I've heard about Sushi Sam's is that it's not customizable. My one big fault with Tomi's onigiri, however, is that they put a decent chunk of too-fresh wasabi between the rice and the fish. I can handle some wasabi, but this came out of my nose and ruined a few pieces of fish for me. I ended up having to pinch off the wasabi before eating the sushi.

I think it's also notable that at least three pieces of fish were very fishy, which made it almost inedible for my boyfriend (which means I got more--yay :)

Overall, Tomi has great stuff, but just for personal preference, I like Sushi Sam's better. Both sushi omakase sets are about the same price, so it really depends on whether you want sushi that's tailored for each kind of fish (Sushi Sam's) or simple, customizable onigiri (Tomi).

Sushi Tomi
635 W Dana St
http://www.sushitomi.com/