Explosive Flavors at Hummingbird Sushi

The Hokkaido scallops at Hummingbird Sushi are precisely the type of factor you hope for at an omakase meal: a shock that adjustments how you consider an ingredient. Aged in kombu, which companies the flesh and enhances the pure umami of the shellfish, the scallops are underlined by a double-whammy of citrus from lemon confit and yuzu French dressing.

However the dish additionally embodies the disconnect of a restaurant that’s torn between high-minded sushi, boisterous flavors, and flamboyant presentation. Off-putting bubbles of yuzu foam collect on the fringe of the pearlescent bivalve cash, which chef Ji Hun Hong arms over the sushi bar on bricks of Himalayan pink salt, a technique of serving I assumed had been deserted in 2010.

Jiro dreamed of a selected type of sushi, a imaginative and prescient of simplicity, exactly sliced fish, and minimal intervention by the chef. In Seattle, the place Jiro-trained Shiro Kashiba launched high-end sushi, and the place he and his disciples nonetheless dominate the scene, high-end sushi tradition tends to fall into two classes: the fish-worshipping Edo-style of Kashiba and cocktail-centric spots serving multi-ingredient rolls to folks extra within the scene than the seafood.

Hummingbird Sushi, which opened within the former Paju house on Decrease Queen Anne in August, blows a fiery, jalapeño-fueled gap by way of the middle of that dichotomy. The fish stays the star, however a colourful supporting forged is allowed on stage, and infrequently the accoutrements steal the present.

“I do not need to do the identical factor,” Hummingbird proprietor and chef Ji says. “My means is simply my style, my taste, and one thing totally different.” He moved to Seattle from El Paso as a result of it was too onerous to get high-quality fish there, and, when he did get it, his prospects nonetheless most popular fried dishes over uncooked.

At Hummingbird, the pursuit of perfection falls to the wayside, changed by creativity and freedom, and a style of sushi that I’ve taken to describing as Texas-style—every part’s greater there, particularly the flavors. (However not the a la carte menu, which is sparse and primarily sashimi and nigiri, with solely a pair of rolls.)

Ji’s focus is on his tasting menus, the seven-course, $90 Fashionable Omakase and the 10-course, $150 Fashionable Tremendous Omakase, the latter provided solely on the sushi bar. These change seasonally, although prospects on the dozenish tables within the elegant wood-walled room can order any dish from each menus.

On the desk, ordering a la carte allowed me to leap round, bouncing from dishes I knew I beloved (uni nigiri) to those who intrigued me, just like the White Fish Heaven, a tasting of the day’s greatest white fish. However the Fashionable Tremendous Omakase pushed me out of my ordinary consolation zone: As a substitute of uni nigiri, Ji served uni shooters. Shooters typically keep away from the much less well-liked flavors and textures of shellfish, neutralizing them with vodka and sending them down in a sea of tomato juice. Ji’s uni shooter did the alternative. The brilliant, skinny sake grew to become a river, floating a trio of eggs—quail yolk, Hokkaido uni, and yuzu tobiko—out of the champagne flute and into my mouth constructing right into a textural crescendo.

Ji’s maximalism works nicely in dishes like that, when it focuses on texture, or when it goals for taste, as within the toro zuke (cured tuna) with kizami—recent chopped wasabi. It additionally works, I famous because the Fashionable Tremendous Omakase crept previous its second hour, within the service of the visitors’ consolation within the type of the overstuffed bar stools and pillows scattered on banquettes.

However it falters when it will get showy with luxurious substances. No person on both of my visits cared concerning the edible gold flecked onto fatty tuna or the black truffle paste added undetectably to the salmon that kicked off the omakase. Maybe it’s that Edo-style schooling, however I might have fortunately traded any of the flashiness for extra cautious or exact knife cuts on the fish.

Seattle’s wonderful sushi scene is a brand new setting for Ji, who moved to the US from Seoul at age 26, forsaking his profession in advertising. He started working at a sushi bar in Greenville, South Carolina, to study English, a profession that took him to Florida and Ohio. Greater than a decade later, he ended up in El Paso, the place he opened his first restaurant, Dragonfly Wine and Sushi Bistro.

Ten years on, El Paso was sizzling, and getting hotter. The dry setting made Ji sick, and getting good fish was exhausting: He needed to have it shipped by FedEx from Hawai’i or imported from Japan to Los Angeles, then placed on a aircraft to El Paso. “I might go decide up from the cargo at Southwest,” he says. He was prepared for one thing near the ocean, with an viewers that appreciated his fish.

I, for one, do. Significantly the itoyori, on which Ji cooked the pores and skin with sizzling water, leaving the meat plump and sophisticated, however softening the sting and highlighting the majestic glimmers that give the fish its English identify: golden threadfin bream. As he served the walu, with pickled horseradish French dressing that cuts by way of the buttery, tender fish, Ji instructed the sushi bar, “No person else has this.” Higher often known as escolar, and infrequently offered optimistically as “white tuna,” its paucity is partially because of its popularity for the digestive points it could trigger when eaten in giant portions. The three slim slices comprising the third course of our tasting have been nothing to fret about; a uncommon delight, and one of many highlights of Hummingbird’s 10-course menu.

“Hummingbirds are very peaceable,” Ji says, and remind him of himself: pleasant, small, energetic. Colourful illustrations of the chook nestle into leafy insets on the wall, enhance the placemats, and even adorn a bathmat within the restroom. Their “good vitality and nice vibes towards folks” led Ji to call his restaurant after them. The restaurant’s service, led by Ji’s spouse, Nicha Saenkaew, embodies that.

I arrived six minutes late for my omakase appointment, however that was nonetheless 20 minutes earlier than my seat was prepared. The brand new restaurant was struggling to handle a Friday night time rush and the earlier spherical of diners remained on the sushi bar. The stress of the workers and impatient diners was palpable. The couple subsequent to me, out for a birthday celebration, joked nervously about paying the babysitter further as we sat down. Chef Ji instantly broke the strain with a bonus chunk earlier than we dove into the 10-course tasting menu: golden eye snapper nigiri.

At most upscale Seattle sushi bars this may be the primary in a parade of nigiri, served piece-by-piece, however as an alternative it kicked off Ji’s distinctive choice, together with Indonesian sambal dressed tuna, spot prawns with recent grated wasabi, and a duo of lobster, sous vide and in a fritter with blue crab. By the point we obtained to the A5 Wagyu nigiri on the finish of the meal, any reminiscence of the rocky begin had been erased by Ji and Saenkaew’s heat. When the meal ended, everybody was sharing a bottle of sake and—in that nice Seattle ritual—cooing over images of one another’s canine.

“We make a mistake, we’re not good,” Ji says. “We repair it, and the subsequent time it’s not going to occur.” After I spoke to him the next week, he defined how they’d modified their reservation system to keep away from that kind of delay sooner or later. A yr after transferring to Seattle and some months into opening Hummingbird, Ji remains to be continually adjusting, studying the quirks and preferences of native palates—not like El Paso, Seattle audiences love their uncooked fish. We care much more concerning the origins of our otoro than any ostentatious extras. Ji, along with his hummingbird vitality, is studying as he goes, wings buzzing with pleasure, yuzu, and jalapeño, because the restaurant finds its place in Seattle’s aggressive sushi scene.