I've been curious about Ari Sushi and it has been on my Yelp bookmarks for a while. Their tendon pictures looked so good, but it is out of the way for me unless I'm actually around the area. Today was the day! After a strenuous hike, this was well earned and deserved, so my partner and I decided to give this place a try. Ari Sushi is located inside a plaza and there are plenty of parking available. We arrived at Ari around 5:30PM-ish, so pretty early dinner on a Saturday. This place looked spacious, clean, and simple, but great.
The menu is a lot bigger than I expected. On Yelp, I saw that most of their most popular dishes were tendon, so that's what I thought they mainly serve, but they do a lot of bento, sushi, and rolls as well. Pretty extensive menu. Between my partner and I, we ordered edamame as appetizer, and shared a Seared Hamachi nigiri and Seared Hotate nigiri. My partner ordered the Ebi Tendon as his main, while I opted for Chicken Tendon.
Food came pretty fast. We were each given a bowl of miso soup and sweet corn salad as complementary starters as well. They also gave a bigger plate of complementary japchae. Also, they have a jar of ginger slices, pickled shallots, and pickled radish on every table. So plenty to share from the start. They were all okay! I like the variety these added to the meal. For our order, the edamame came first. It was made well! It wasn't overcooked, so it had a bit of crunch to it. I love edamame, so I enjoyed this even if it's just a very simple dish. Then came the two seared nigiri. We tried the Hamachi Nigiri first, and unfortunately, this was a bit of a miss. It was seared nicely, but overcooked, so the Hamachi didn't have the buttery taste of a raw fish. The Hamachi slices were white with just a tad bit of pink to it. It did have a nice smokey flavor to it though. I think it was also lacking a bit of flavor. Maybe it could have used a light sauce glaze on it. On the other hand, the seared Hotate Nigiri was made well! It looked like it had a bit of sauce on the top. It was lightly seared, and the Hotate retained it's buttery texture. It was delicious! As for my main dish, the Chicken Tendon! Portion size was great. I didn't exactly know if there was a difference between tempura and tendon, but according to Google, tendon is just 'tempura' and 'donbori' put together, haha. My Chicken Tendon came with chicken, 2 shrimps, seaweed, kabocha, eggplant, shishito pepper, and a soft boiled egg. Plenty of variety. I think my favorite of the tempura was the seaweed actually. It has a mild sweet taste to it and it's just a thin crispy chip basically. I think the rest of the tempura could use more flavor, though I would say that they do their batter and frying pretty nicely. Each tempura had a light batter and none of it was super oily. The chicken part of it was like mini chicken kaarage. My bowl had plenty of pieces in there, but I think it would be even better if they gave bigger and less pieces, rather than lots of small pieces. I rather get more pieces of juicy chicken bites, as opposed to drier crunchy battered bits. My second favorite piece was the eggplant because it's moist and soft, but had a crunchy outer layer. I thought the egg was pretty cool too! Haven't seen a fried egg like that. It might have helped if they gave some sort of tempura dipping sauce on the side because I think most of them could use a bit more flavor. All in all, I enjoyed my tendon bowl! They even gave a delicious complementary dessert as well - shiso sherbet! This may have been the best part of the meal just because it was so unique. Light and sweet, but you clearly get the shiso flavor. When all is said and done, you just walk up to the counter in the front and close your tab.
I'm definitely glad I checked Ari Sushi off my Yelp bookmarks. It's a nice, once-in-a-while, indulgent meal. If I happen to be in the area again, I may just come try their sushi next time. Service was pretty friendly! read more