…………………………………………………………………………… Fish Tail 543 E 5th St.
Price Range: $12-15
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When I arrived at Tab Tos, the insanely small, boxy sushi spot that my friend Katy has been raving about, the sign in the window read “Fish Tail.” I figured that since she was a regular, maybe she was referring to the place’s secret Japanese name — sort of like how barflies call the unmarked dive on First Avenue and 7th Street “Tile Bar,” even though it’s normally listed as WCOU Radio. But when Katy arrived and we squeezed into a tiny table against the bare, whitewashed wall, she sensed that something was wrong.
“There used to be overalls hanging on that wall, and that’s not the mean lady who usually serves you here,” she said, a little frantically. She stood up and spun around to peer into the tiny open kitchen before waving down the new waitress and asking what had become of the couple that used to own the place. Apparently, they had sold the place a few weeks ago and were looking to open a new restaurant. “The menu is the same,” she assured us with a friendly smile.
“The old owners were so hostile,” Katy said, with more than a tinge of nostalgia. “One time we came in with a party of five, and the woman wouldn’t let us pull up a fifth chair to the four-person table. She made us sit separately! And if you asked for a slight variation from a dish on the menu, she would tell you, ‘NO!’” Katy mimicked the mean face of the elder Japanese woman, and then sighed.
Fortunately, the prices are still pretty great — we each ordered a Combo Plate for $9.50 and left feeling stuffed. I enjoyed a huge salad of fresh greens, cucumbers, carrots, and thick slices of salmon sashimi in a very spicy onion dressing. Katy tested mine against hers, a tuna sashimi salad with a sweet and mellow ginger dressing, and claimed that they just weren’t the same. My tuna-avocado roll with eel on top was a bit heavy on the rice, and the pieces were about the size of my fist, so — while I couldn’t eat them in one bite — the portion was very generous. Katy’s so-called “spicy lobster roll,” was also big but pretty bland.
Our very small check came with a pair of fortune cookies and two big Japanese candies, which the waitress promised were very good, but Katy didn’t want hers. I felt her pain — losing a restaurant (with a really stern staff) is like losing a boyfriend (who wasn’t ever that nice anyway). Luckily, drowning our sorrows wasn’t difficult — it was still happy hour at Tile Bar, and we were only a few blocks away.
