Teriyaki-San: Not Exactly Japanese, But Must-Eat!

UPDATE: Teriyaki-San is OUT OF BUSINESS

**And I weep for the loss of their crab rangoon.... *sob*

Teriyaki-San is a little hole in the wall on Pensacola, across from the plaza with Sumo-Sabi (which I've heard unfavorable reviews about), Aveda, and the McDonald's near Ocala and Pensacola. Some people identify it as being in the same plaza as Planned Parenthood, which probably has the biggest sign in that parking lot.

Teriyaki-San is small, with only about 3 or 4 tables in the whole place, it's mostly an enclosed take-away stand. As the name implies, it's mostly Japanese food, and of course they specialize in teriyaki chicken, but they have several other offerings as well. They have a sushi menu (no sushi bar though), and a few appetizers like gyoza (pork dumplings) and miso and udon soup, but their specialty is their good variety of hibachi and teriyaki offerings. The food always seems fresh grilled, you can definitely taste the flame even though I'm sure none was involved. It's almost more of the feeling of that guilty pleasure you get from eating carnival food, it's probably pretty greasy, but it tastes so incredibly good, and at least this time you can claim it's Japanese so it must be good for you. In addition to Japanese food though, Teriyaki-San also has egg rolls and crab rangoon, which seem inappropriately and shamelessly Chinese to me, which is a tad insulting to me, I guess they figure most people don't know the difference, but...

Let me say this right now. I personally think Teriyaki-San has THE best crab rangoon in town, and it's relatively cheap. You can get about 8 pieces for around $3. EIGHT. For THREE DOLLARS. And they're creamy and full of stuffing and the dough is tasty and fried fresh, and... Sometimes I come here just for that. Since it's that good, I'll excuse the fact that this belongs separate from a place that calls itself a Japanese restaurant.

But when I'm not hell-bent on crab rangoon, I'm pretty dang satisfied with the teriyaki and hibachi dishes, which all come in white styrofoam boxes filled with a bed of rice or noodles, a pile of meat and vegetables on top, and you have your choice of sauces including a soy based sauce, ginger sauce, hot chunky pepper sauce (the Chinese kind that WILL destroy you in large amounts), and best of all, their white sauce, also known as "yum yum sauce" or "pink sauce." I can't exactly tell you what that sauce actually is, I know it's a common sauce... it's similar to the pinkish creamy sauce (possibly horseradish based, but not near as potent) that you get with hibachi anywhere else where they have actual hibachi performances where the goofy Elvis impersonating chef catapults a shrimp in your little brother's mouth and an eggshell into your water. It's that sauce, except TEN TIMES better, I can't even explain it... It's sweet, it's tangy, and turns any grilled food into solid gold, including chicken, beef, or even cabbage, it's so good I want to baptize my child in it.

For prices, Teriyaki-San is okay, reasonable anyway. As mentioned the crab rangoon is far cheaper than it should be, but the other things are about what you would expect, it's easy to run up over $12 after you include a soda. You'll always need to wait for your food to be cooked fresh, so expect a moderate wait, however they've recently installed a PlayStation 3 hooked up to their big HD TV in the dining area, so you can ask to play that for free to waste a good 10 minutes in a jiffy.

All in all, Teriyaki-San is a great experience, but not if you're looking for a place to dine out for a serious dinner. It's an amazing quick meal though, too bad it's only open during normal business hours, they close by around 10pm, and for the pick-up stand format (don't get me wrong, it's pretty nicely decorated for a small, near-take-out-only shack), I think it would be better suited for run and gun late night munchies than a real place to "go out" to eat, so it winds up just being my "I'm too lazy to cook, but want delicious Asian food" place. Visit them at http://www.teriyakisan.com/

Sakura is Turning Mid-town Monroe into Little Asia

I'm a little surprised at the collection of Asian restaurants on North Monroe near Fifth and Sixth Aves., they're multiplying like rabbits over there. The first to make a big splash was Masa, right next to Café Cabernet, and then up the street a little, Fusion and another small sushi place opened up soon after, and there's a little Chinese Restaurant hiding behind the House of Frames or whatever that shop is called, though I've heard shady things about the Chinese shop... Anyway, Sakura is now the what, 6th or 7th Japanese sushi joint to open up in town, let alone the 4th Asian restaurant in midtown? And I can name about 4 or 5 more Japanese restaurants that have already opened in Tallahassee since then.

We decided to stop through there several months ago when it was brand new, and have since revisited several times - this post has been a long time coming. Now that Japanese restaurants are becoming common, it's a little easier to become a connoisseur of them even for the less Indie-rock foodie crowd. (Read: Even my mom has started eating sushi these days.)

So what's so great about Sakura, and how does it stack up against other places in town? Let's start with location and atmosphere. As mentioned, it's on North Monroe about midtown, just north of Sixth Ave., in the strip plaza called "The Assembly", you'll spot the big monolith sign with the very 80's stair railing wrapped around the monolith. I have an easier time finding that sign than the light up red letters and red lanterns on the storefront itself, a little lower than street level and off to the side behind some shrubs, or the non-descript white sign camoflauged with trees and other plaza signs by the street. Inside, Sakura is very clean and has a great, modern yet traditional Japanese atmosphere. The floors, chairs, and walls are dark wood finishes, the tables are black laquered wood, the ceiling is a strange dark wood framework with soothing teal blue tiles behind it, and the walls are clean and sparsely decorated. There's a bar on the right when you enter that looks rather modern, really nice HD TV and futuristic looking seats. I've never hung out at the bar area so I can't say anything about their night life, but it looks like a nice cozy area compared to most bars, since it is rather small but very inviting. Probly a decent place to escape with a date for a quick drink, better than a crowded full bar. Overall, the atmosphere is classy without feeling pretentious. There's also a strip where you can sit facing the chef at the sushi bar, of course.

Sakura offers hibachi, but not like Mori or Osaka or other traditional hibachi places where the chefs pull all sorts of stunts and give you a show, they just cook it in back and bring it to you on nice plates. I have to say that the hibachi grilled vegetables there are very very good. They're better known as a sushi place (probably solely because the hibachi is not a show, which the term has a strong association with), and their sushi is pretty dang good. I would say their biggest advantage over other sushi spots is their presentation, which is top notch, and their prices are pretty reasonable. For the same production value in presentation, I'd get the same and pay more at Masa. As for taste and variety, you can find all the standards of sushi you want here, and several of their signature sushi rolls taste pretty good, are inventive, and all have great presentation, but there isn't any one real "knockout" roll I can recommend (though granted, I've still only sampled about half of the signature sushi rolls so far... there's a good number of them). The exception is the Crazy Dragon Roll, which has fish that I can't remember inside, BBQ eel skin on top, the tail of the eel hanging off the back, and every roll plating is individually decorated with the eel barbecue sauce into a drawing of a dragon, which is really cute and most people take a picture of their first helping. The drawing is also never the same twice, always fun.

Miso soup and ginger dressing salad are sushi bar staples, and they vary greatly from place to place. The miso at Sakura has a good broth, and the seaweed leaves are usually pretty big, but the tofu is small and sparse. I prefer a miso with big chunks of tofu, but if you're not thrilled with that, this should work for you. I've also had better miso broth at other places too, but there's nothing to complain about here... I'm more miffed over the tofu. Their ginger dressing is really good though, even though more places do a good ginger dressing than not, but this is solid. Another staple of course is tempura, which Sakura does well, but is also hard to mess up. I will say that to my knowledge, Sakura is the only place with whitefish tempura, which was very nice, very light, not fishy, and still hardy.

The real killer reason to go to Sakura in my opinion is for the lunch specials. Namely, the bento box sets. Bento of course are those sectioned boxes almost like an ancient Japanese TV-dinner or cafeteria tray, and always come with a variety of foods. These usually run for about $12-$15 at most places, and at Sakura they're only offered at lunch time... but they're just $8.25. Furthermore, most places' bento boxes come with an entree, a half a sushi roll, a scoop of rice, and maybe one other thing, frequently just a pile of sautéed or pickled onions or cabbage. At Sakura though, they will hook you up large for less than the price of those skimpy bentos: Their box comes with 3 or 4 pieces of ebi shumai (that's a shrimp dumpling with a hint of sweetness, boiled then lightly fried for a seared outside), a scoop of white rice, a half a California Roll (3 or 4 pieces), a main course of your choice from about 4 options including katsu (breaded and fried chicken, pork, or beef), hibachi, tempura, or teriyaki, AND it comes with miso soup AND salad! That's a delicious, filling, full Japanese meal for $8.25 and covers all the bases of your varied tastes for a very reasonable price. That just can't be beat for Japanese lunch if you ask me.

Summary: Pretty good sushi, pretty good prices, great atmosphere, clean & pretty, traditional sushi/hibachi options (not fancy pretentious or Asian Fusion type of shenanigans). The big reason to go is lunch time bento. Also, like most sushi restaurants, they do close from 2pm-5pm. Visit them at http://sakurafl.com/default.aspx

Extreme Wings is Solid

This week we found out about a new hole in the wall wing shop called Extreme Wings, on the corner of White Dr. and Pensacola St. Being the hot wing fiends that we are, we had to try it out.

It's a small place, shoved into the side of a Shell gas station (in fact you should be looking for the gas station rather than the restaurant), and parking is a bit sparse, since you have to use the gas station's lot, which, well... you're familiar with gas station parking. Additionally, the venue itself is pretty small, only about 3 or 4 tables, it's more of a take-away stand. They also deliver to a ridiculous radius (consider that they're in deep FSU-campus-land, and they'll deliver to our office on John Knox Rd. by the Tallahassee Mall...!!) which is a huge plus, but thanks to traffic and unrefined insulation and delivery techniques of the burgeoning bistro, the food might get cold by the time it gets to you if you're pushing that delivery distance. We figure the best solution is pick-up and take-out, or delivery if you're closer. Since it's new, the place still looks pretty clean. The furniture is a little cheap as well as sparse, but again, thanks to the space factor, your best bet is to just take-out anyway.

Now, on to the food. First off, they have a pleasantly long and varied list of wing flavors - no website yet to peruse, but trust us. They have the usuals, mild to nuclear, teriyaki, barbecue, and ranging into some uncommons like lemon pepper, garlic parmesan, spicy garlic, to the very unique, like lime pepper, or spicy lemonlime pepper. We decided to sample four that ran the gamut, from standbys to outlandish. Moreover, there are lots of other options, like chicken tenders, sub sandwiches (a particularly tempting one was the Spicy Threat - buffalo chicken breast, cajun turkey breast, and cajun beef), and a surprising variety of hardy salad options. You can even build your own salad or sub. Sides include the typical fries and veggie sticks, and also cole slaw, extra sauce, etc.

We decided to go with their Grand Opening Special: $6.99 for 10 Jumbo Wings, and if you get a large 32oz. drink (separately) with it, you'll get an additional 5 wings. After adding celery and sauce, both extra but small charges, this came out to about $11. We split up our flavors between spicy garlic, spicy lemonlime pepper, spicy BBQ, and nuclear hot wings. We like 'em hot, can ya tell?

Some of these flavor titles seemed a little misleading at first taste, but none of them were bad. First off, the spicy lemonlime pepper wasn't that spicy, nor that strongly lemon or lime, however it was a very nice full flavor just the same. Clearly they're not made with zest of either citrus, and whatever they're doing is certainly not spicy, so if you're intimidated by spicy food, I highly recommend this flavor. Or heck, I just plain recommend it. It isn't fruity or tart or hot, but it tickles each of those flavors a little and it makes a pretty pleasant experience, even over 10 of them. Ditto for the "spicy" BBQ, it wasn't really spicy at all, but a very good full BBQ flavor with just a hint of zip to it.

Nuclear wings we also felt were a little mislabeled, because Laura and I have a high tolerance for spicy food and we like to cry as we suffer through our food and come out as champions in a battle hard won. That's a little masochistic for most folks, but that's just how we roll. So we jumped headlong into Nuclear wings without knowing what their scale is - because if you've ever eaten wings at more than one place, you know that different places vary GREATLY in intensity of what they call "hot". We were a little disappointed that the nuclear wings posed no threat to us at all, however, we did both agree that the flavor was excellent. Sometimes it's a bigger disappointment to go somewhere like Buffalo Wild Wings and get their hottest wings and while they'll kill you, they also just taste like... "hot." Whereas Extreme Wings' nuclear wings definitely packed flavor, and not even that generic hot wing flavor. I highly recommend these to anyone, and don't be scared by the moniker, I would rate these as more like plain hot or possibly x-hot at other places. I wouldn't say they were even as hot as Beef O'Brady's x-hot wings.

Spicy Garlic was the all time winner though. Garlic wings are harder to nail than you'd expect. I mean, everyone agrees, you involve garlic in something and it's always delicious, but with wings it's a little tougher. Garlic tends not to soak into some sauces, or some places may use garlic powder, and the texture of the sauce really contributes to how much of that clings to the wings, all resulting in most wing places' hot garlic wings to taste only a touch of garlic, which can be a let down. Not these babies though. All the sauces at Extreme Wings are relatively thick but smooth, about the consistency of ketchup or BBQ sauce, and the spicy garlic is no exception in consistency, BUT... it has big chunks of fresh minced garlic floating all in it, and it contributes to a very nice, not overbearing, full garlic flavor on the wing. I couldn't get enough of these, they're probably the best spicy garlic wings I've ever had, and I've had a few close contenders. I recommend this to everyone as well, since it isn't the sort of spicy to kill even children, and it's not strong enough to give you bad breath or keep vampires away, but tastes absolutely delicious.
We didn't get a chance to try the fries (potato wedges, to be exact) nor any of the salads, which all looked like great options, plus the flavors mentioned here are just the tip of the iceberg. Other flavors that look intriguing are Italian herb, plain Lemon-Lime, Lemon Pepper (only because much like spicy garlic, many wing places carry this but it's tough to nail), Lime Pepper, and sweet & sour. Considering the thorough satisfaction we got from today's sample, I would expect these other flavors to perform just as well. We'll definitely come here again.

UPDATE: Later I came back for the lemon pepper wings... a very good sauce, though my batch seemed not so soaked in it, perhaps because I let it sit while picking it up and driving home. Once I smothered the wings in the sauce, it was one of the best lemon pepper sauces I had, strong lemon, good salt and pepper spice to it. I still think Wing Stop is the best lemon pepper wings in town, though these are strong contenders.

Final verdict: The place is awesome, tons of variety, reasonable prices, high quality wing sauces, recommend taking-out. If you're looking for diabolically hot wings, you won't find them here; if you're a little timid about hot food but still somewhat adventurous, don't fear ordering the scary sounding flavors here because they taste delicious and are less intimidating than they sound - totally worth the try.