And now back to sushi...
We stopped into Ginza on a very busy Saturday evening, and right away we knew it would be good. The place was PACKED. Yet, in the first of many testaments to their impressive service, we were seated right away. You see, Ginza runs like a well-oiled machine. No table has one server; every server works with every table, and no orders are written down. Yet we got the correct food and the correct bill -- and quickly. That would be impressive even if everyone working there spoke perfect English, but they don't. Add on the sheer volume of customers, the noise, the relativily small space and well .... I don't know how they do it.
I've never been to Japan, but I'd wager that Ginza is the closest experience I've had so far. It's small, loud, crowded, and very little of the menu is in English. IN keeping with the spirit of things, we decided to stick with traditional favorites: beef gyoza (dumplings), edamame, yellowtail and tuna sashimi, sake. We only went off the reservation one time and ordered a Lava Roll, which is a fried salmon roll with eel sauce.
The sashimi was very good -- fresh, nicely cut, and arrived in 5 very generous pieces. I liked the texture of the lava roll, but there wasn't much flavor there. The eel sauce tasted good, but unfortunately it gave my husband heartburn (or at least we think it did - it was the only thing he hadn't tried before, so we're assuming it was the culprit). Edamame, and even gyoza, are fairly difficult things to mess up, and Ginza didn't.
For dessert my husband tried a house specialty, green tea ice-cream. The bright green color of the ice-cream belied its delicate flavor and creamy texture. This came highly recommended, and we can see why -- it's a perfect dessert after a light Japanese meal.
Unfortunately we weren't given much time to enjoy it, or the massive amounts of sake we ordered to go with it, as we were handed our bill and rushed out the door by a waitstaff that obviously thought we owed them our table back. And that's my one complaint about Ginza: the atmosphere, though lively, isn't very relaxing. For the same kind of food, at similar prices, I prefer to go someplace a little more inviting.
