Union Sushi & BBQ

We saw Union Sushi and BBQ featured on Check Please a couple of months ago. Despite having gone to a similar restaurant back in December, we thought we would give this place a try because it looked really fun from the tv feature.

Buffalo Duck Wing

We ordered a bunch of small items so we could try a lot more. We had a combination of appetizers, sushi rolls and robata grill items.

Buffalo duck wing - sweet chili and hot sauce butter, napa cabbage slaw, yuzu blue cheese dressing. Fortunately a duck wing is much larger than a chicken wing so a single wing does give way to several bites to enjoy. (In fact a week after we ate at Union Sushi, they were going to have duck wing eating contest.) The meat fell off the bone and had a crispy exterior but warm and tender on the inside.  The flavors of the hot sauce, slaw and blue cheese were a more sophisticated play on the buffalo wing.

Truffled Tuna

Truffled Tuna - truffle oil, Parmesan  avocado, chili fresco, wonton chips. Basically this was a tuna tartare dish.  Although tasty, we've enjoyed similar combinations better at other establishments.

Squash and Scallop

Cauliflower

Robata Grill, bbq items - bacon wrapped scallop - wasabi avocado puree, sweet plum sauce and ginger, squash - sweet miso, sesame and chive, cauliflower - cheddar spice.  This was our second foray into Robata grill cooking and once again we loved it. The 3 items we tried here were all fantastic.  There was just enough for us to get a little taste of each.  The were all unique flavor combinations.  Natalie's favorite was the sweet miso on the squash and Nick's favorite was the cauliflower. (Interestingly, we enjoyed the veggies the most at the other Robata grill restaurant as well.) The Robata grill lends itself to sweet and smoky flavors from all of the dishes.

We tried 4 different sushi rolls.  For all of them, we only ordered half rolls each (4 pieces) so we could try more combinations.  They had a few traditional sushi rolls but also had lots of unique variations.
Dragon roll with black rice - shrimp, eel, avocado, masago, green onion, eel sauce. Black rice has a firm texture and boasts less carbs and calories than white rice.  The black rice made the presentation much more dramatic.  It was a firmer, dryer rice than white rice, while still holding the vinegary taste of sushi rice.

Dragon Roll with black rice

Shrimp tempura roll - avocado, eel sauce, caramelized onion, masago mayo. We thought the tempura aspect of this roll would just be the shrimp, but the entire roll was fried tempura style, which gave the roll and extra layer of crunchiness.

Shrimp Tempura Roll

Bay Street california roll (with crabcake instead of crab alone), crabcake, cucumber, masago, spicy mayo. This was a twist on the traditional California roll with small bits of crab cake instead of crab (or krab) meat.

Soft shell crab roll - what made this sushi roll different was that it was wrapped in cucumber instead of rice. Therefore it was crunchier and the cucumber also gave it a "springy" type of feel.

We had some unique combinations.  There were small enough portions of everything that we didn't feel overstuffed and really got to try a lot, but the items are kind of pricey considering the size of the portions.

California roll (L) and Soft Shell Crab Roll (R)

Final thoughts on Union Sushi and BBQ:
Food - we loved the duck wing and Robata items. The sushi was unique but not as exciting as the grilled items.


I Pad menu display

Service - so the interesting thing about the wait staff is that they all have I pads which they carry to each table and leave for a few minutes so you can see the pictures of the specials for the day. It would have been neat if the entire menu were on the Ipad, but it gave us a good idea of what to expect. The items were brought to our table as they were prepared. We ordered everything in 2 batches.

Interior

Atmosphere - it was very industrial looking with metal mesh netting and exposed steel. There were also graffiti style Japanese animation on the walls. This is a hip and trendy place were a lot of younger  (yuppie types) were prepping for nights out.