It's not surprising that the same culture that gave us sushi also gave us haiku. After all, both the cuisine and the poetry derive their delicate beauty from juxtaposition of a few simple, exquisite ingredients, be they adjectives and nouns or vinegared rice and fish. At its best, a nori-bound roll sliced into coins and plated with glassy folds of ginger and a bee's sting of wasabi recalls the taut, symmetrical perfection of classic 5-7-5 verse. Here, I'll try:
Too pretty to eat,
White rice, tuna, ginger rose,
Chopsticks move too slow.
OK, fine. Basho, I am not. Nor is the cuisine at Kohana Japanese Restaurant anything that requires a delicate pen. In fact, you might say that what traditional sushi is to the haiku, Kohana's repertoire of super-sized rolls is to the telephone book. Consider the so-called Mother of All Sushi, a $19 roll sliced into eight hockey puck-sized cross-sections and plated with a peanut-honey dipping sauce. It takes more than 17 syllables just to list the ingredients in this epic signature maki: "a gigantic roll with spicy tuna, tempura shrimp, soft-shell crab, seasoned spicy crawfish, snow crab mix, masago and cucumber." If traditional sushi rolls cut into bite-size baubles of pristine fish and rice recall a box of chocolates, the Mother of All Sushi is more like a big honkin' box of doughnuts — warm, soft, slightly sweet, and really big.
Big. That's how they roll at Kohana, which opened its third location last month in Green Hills. The five-year-old restaurant group, owned by Doris Cheung, has stores in Clarksville and Hendersonville. The exhaustive menu lists more than 70 rolls, in addition to nigiri and sashimi. A quick glance at the prices — ranging from $4 for an avocado roll to a matriarchal $19 for the Mother of All Sushi — lets you know you're in for something different.
It's not that the ingredients diverge from what we've come to expect in Nashville's growing constellation of sushi restaurants. The familiar lineup of tuna, salmon, crab, shrimp, avocado, masago and eel dominate the roster. What's different is how many of them get piled together at a time. Take the Sunset Roll, for example, which crams crawfish, tuna, salmon, albacore, barbecue eel, shrimp and snow crab into a rice roll-up that could fill a tube sock.
The Bentley, a $15 medley of spicy crab and avocado in a sleeve of rice, was topped with such a generous blanket of gently seared salmon that the overall impression was that of a salmon-and-rice entrée, delivered roulade-style.
With so many ingredients crammed into such large portions, the subtleties quickly wash out, so the distinguishing feature on a roll such as the Alfredo — spicy crawfish, spicy mayo, eel sauce, masago and fresh chives — becomes the textural flourish of fried whitefish on top. At that point, you might stop to ask yourself if you meant to be eating fried food, or if you came to a sushi bar in search of something less embellished.
If you seek the simple pleasure of fresh fish and vinegared rice, stick with nigiri, sashimi or the more straightforward familiar rolls. (Be warned: Scallop nigiri is prepared like a scallop salad, with mayonnaise and masago in lieu of the simple mollusk over rice and wasabi.)
We enjoyed the tataki, which plated ruby-hued straps of tuna over crisp matchsticks of daikon. We were also delighted to find the rare treat of hamachi kama. The collarbone and pectoral fin of a yellowtail were grilled until thin golden skin cracked over buttery hunks of fish — the so-called "cheeks" — whose texture recalled succulent fried chicken.
On the other hand, if you've always wished sushi were a little more, well, cooked, have a look at the Volcano Roll, which loads a Clarksville Roll (snowcrab, avocado and masago) with the extravagant topping of baked scallops, crabstick, masago and Japanese mayo. Or the Super Bowl. We did not taste this hulking item, which the menu describes as tempura shrimp, cream cheese and asparagus, deep-fried and topped with baked spicy crab. But when we saw it arrive at a neighboring table, we mistook it for a loaded baked potato.
Beyond sushi, there are familiar cooked offerings such as gyoza, teriyaki, tempura and noodles. Children raved over the katsu (panko-crusted fried chicken breast). Adults were impressed by the quality of yaki soba, with fresh sesame-tinged noodles tangled around shrimp so large and muscular they seemed like lobsters in training. Only one dish was altogether disappointing — thick hunks of calamari cloaked in a batter so heavy we suspected the squid shielded itself not with ink but tempura.
It must be said, though, that when we left the vast majority of the dish on the table, our server asked if we wanted a replacement — then removed the order from the bill without our asking when we didn't. That level of hospitality carried throughout our meals, with gracious and enthusiastic servers replacing our fallen chopsticks almost before they hit the ground.
As much as anything, we admired the décor of the large sleek room, which anchors the newly renovated office building that will soon house Alegria Mexican Restaurant and Tequila Bar and The Perch. Against a subtle palette of gray and black, lit by chandeliers roped with opaque black stones, colors pop with great impact — bright-orange bar stools, blue-green tiles, gold-topped chopsticks. The dazzling décor is simultaneously bold and restrained, warm and cool, decadent and terse — a reminder that in design, as in haiku and sushi, sometimes just a few well-chosen elements are all that is needed.
Kohana serves lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Full bar is available, including sake.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com.
