Matuba Japanese Restaurant

To start the many meals of David’s visit, Adrian and I brought Monica and him to Matuba, our family’s favorite Japanese restaurant of many years. It caters mostly to the neighborhood yuppies and is a cozy size, but it has affordable prices, a friendly wait staff, and, most importantly, delicious food.

They lately opened a make-your-own-Japanese-salad bar, which we all sampled. It pretty much has every ingredient you could expect to find in the many variations of the ubiquitous Japanese appetizer salad. (The green kind, not the rice noodle kind.) I wasn't that impressed with my salad... but I made it. So let's move on.

I asked for a plate of sushi omakase, which does not translate to “expensive” as Adrian suggested but rather to “chef’s choice.”

If you’re a true sushi lover, I recommend ordering this way. Any quality Japanese restaurant will honor this request. Some will even do a tasting menu of several courses. The sushi chef will give you the best, freshest seafood available since the plate represents him. It also gives him artistic license, giving him a chance to show off and you a chance to taste rare items and combinations that might not always be available, let alone on the everyday menu.

We were joking that I might get a boat, but the waitress set a plate in front of me with two pieces each of: Yellowtail toro (belly, the most tender cut of a fish), aburi (barely seared) salmon toro, uni (sea urchin), white tuna, flounder, and diced scallops in a red pepper Japanese mayo mixed with tempura flakes and tobiko (flying fish roe).

• Toro, any kind although tuna is the most popular, is one of my favorite things in the culinary world. It almost melts in your mouth like butter. Lovers of Kobe beef or Kurobota pork belly, it’s same concept but with fish. For me, a more decadent version of yellowtail tuna is always welcome.
• Aburi is a sear so light it could be missed. Most of the fish remains raw, but the resulting texture is very nice. And like toro, salmon is another favorite of mine. So yeah, I loved it.
• Uni is an acquired taste that I haven’t fully acquired yet, but their uni certainly trumped others I’d had before.
• I prefer white tuna to the regular tuna. It’s less heavy and less fishy, just like canned white tuna is different from canned “light.”
• I’m not sure what the herb underneath the flounder was, but it and the wasabi complemented the fish nicely. [Foodie note: Don’t soak your sushi in soy sauce. Like in any food, the sauce is supposed to add another dimension to the original flavor, not overpower it.]
• The scallops were surely a product of the chef’s creativity since I don’t remember having them that way before. The five ingredients can be found in any good sushi bar, but this was an awesome and inventive mix of their tastes and textures.

And for those who may think sushi isn't filling, I guarantee a plate like this will change your mind. Less respectable sushi joints will bog your stomach down with rice, but a good place like Matuba will give generous cuts of fish with just enough rice. Because of the rich selection, even a voracious eater like me couldn’t have dessert afterwards.

2915 Columbia Pike
Arlington, VA 22204
703.521.2811
http://www.matuba-sushi.com