I thought Fudo was okay. This is an Asian fusion type restaurant that opened in the Parkview on Peachtree mixed-used development in December 2018. It's Korean-owned with a heavy emphasis on sushi rolls and Japanese foods, but with Korean and other small twists.
According to the business, the name of the restaurant "is the Japanese word for the spirit of remarkable food." The husband-wife owners also own the Ichiban Steak & Sushi restaurants in Alpharetta (http://bit.ly/3c1B2dN) and Cumming (http://bit.ly/2uoRzHV).
Fudo's storefront and patio faces Peachtree Boulevard. There's plenty of free parking in the development's surface lot and garage.
The restaurant is modern and spacious with an open layout -- the drinking bar, sushi bar, and dining room all share one big, industrial-looking space. There's also a sizable string-lit patio. It looks nice. The atmosphere is casual.
We visited for Saturday lunch were given dinner menus. The menu consisted of small plates ($4-9 each) like shumai Chinese dumplings ($6) and Korean rice cakes ($6), soups and salads ($3-12 each), tempura ($7), donburi rice bowls ($10-15 each), about 50 (!) Americanized house sushi rolls ($9-18 each), traditional sushi rolls ($5-12 each), hand rolls ($6-8 each), and vegetarian rolls ($9-12 each). The drink menu was fairly extensive with beer, sake, cocktails, and wine.
In addition, they had a sushi (nigiri) and sashimi menu. There was nothing out of the ordinary as far as the sushi selection went, with nigiri running $7-10 for two pieces and sashimi $9-12 for three pieces. There was also a specials board in the back. It's not visible to most customers so you'll have to make an effort to go back there and check it out. Your server can also tell you the specials. During our visit, there were 10 items on it and most were things I was interested in such as otoro, uni (sea urchin), and kinmedai carpaccio (golden eye snapper).
Here's what we ordered:
Small plates
* Tori Karaage ($7) - Japanese fried chicken
Specials
* Live Scallop ($22)
Donburi
* Gyu-don ($15) - marinated short rib, fried kimchi, arugula
* Katsu-don ($12) - crispy pork with balsamic teriyaki, butter corn, pickled vegetables
* Kaisen-don ($15) - cube assorted raw sashimi, masago, scallion
Sushi Rolls
* X-Men: Dark Phoenix ($13) - salmon, yellowtail, spicy tuna, crunch, spicy aioli; topped with black tobiko
* Hot Night ($8) - fried scallops, mango, Sriracha, spicy aioli; topped with tuna, scallop, wasabi lime, spicy kabayaki sauce, scallion, red tobiko, kizami nori
Hand Rolls
* Epi 8 Hand Roll ($8) - tuna, salmon, yellowtail, scallion, jalapeno, mango, masago, crunch; white truffle aioli on the side
Beverages
* Scofflaw Basement IPA ($6) - draft
* Sapporo ($5) - draft
* Hot tea ($3) - green tea
In general, we thought the food was good/fine. Some items were delicious while others were overpriced and/or not what we expected. Everything was beautifully presented.
My favorites and recommendations are the Tori Karaage, Gyu-don, Katsu-don, and Epi 8 hand roll. The Live Scallop was a rip-off, the Kaisen-don was more like a poke bowl instead of a true kaisen-don, and the sushi rolls were okay/run-of-the-mill.
The Tori Karaage was delicious. We were served a small plate of golden brown, boneless fried chicken with green sprouts on top and a yummy red sauce on the side. Each piece of chicken was crispy, tender, moist, and mouthwatering. They fried it just right. Relatively light and satisfying. Really good.
The Gyu-don and Katsu-don were savory and filling. Comfort food. It's hard to go wrong with these. The Gyu-don was like eating boneless galbi (marinated Korean short rib) over rice. Each morsel of meat, rich and delectable. The marinade was a little bit sweet which I liked. The Gyu-don came with fried onion too, kind of like Outback's Bloomin' Onion. The fried pork cutlet in the Katsu-don shared the similar crispy and tasty qualities of the Tori Karaage. Addictive in both texture and flavor. The butter corn and pickled veggies were great as well.
The Epi 8 hand roll was terrific; an explosion of flavors. It's everything great about sushi wrapped into a neat little package. You get it all, from the variety of fresh fish and consistencies (dried seaweed, crunchies) to the truffle sauce, full of umami.
The Live Scallop consisted of five thin slices of scallop served with lime and Hawaiian red salt. The plating was wonderful, but unfortunately, this dish was style over substance. The scallop didn't taste that impressive.
The Kaisen-don should've been renamed Poke Bowl because that's what it was. Granted, the menu description did say "cube" sashimi. Traditional kaisen-don features a variety of sashimi. All we got here were the basic fish: tuna and salmon.
The sushi rolls were satisfactory. Par for the course. If you like rolls, Fudo will suffice. I enjoyed both the X-Men and Hot Night.
The beers were good, but the cup of bagged tea was not.
Service by Ken was fantastic. read more