Jeff Hodenberg
Contributing Writer
How does one decide on where to eat sushi in a town that has an abundance of sushi restaurants? I would say that it depends on what you want from your experience. For a relaxed evening and inexpensive sushi I would recommend you try Sapporo, on Commerical Street. The restaurant has an eclectic but fun vibe to it, with each room having a distinct and different feel.
The menu is typical of any sushi place with an assortment of maki (rolls) and nigiri (raw fish on top of rice) , yet most everything I ate when I visited Sapporo was good, and tasted fresh despite the price. I started off with a bowl of white rice and seaweed salad – my typical start to a sushi meal. I ordered the Negi-ma appetizer, which consists of beef wrapped around grilled scallions and served with a teriyaki sauce, and the special of jumbo shrimp shumai; shrimp in a steamed rice dumpling. The beef for my Negi-ma was a little dry but the sauce it comes with made it tasty so it didn’t matter. The way I figure it is if you’re going out for sushi to eat beef, you should never consider eating sushi again. The shumai I ordered disappeared very quickly as it was very delicious. My girlfriend started with grilled squid which came as a generous portion and was grilled just right so that it was cooked but not overly rubbery. I wasn’t thrilled with the squid but my girlfriend loved it, proclaiming it to be “sushi bubblegum”.
For dinner I decided to order some rolls, the Sada (cooked yellowtail with garlic and ponzu sauce) as something new and my personal favorite – eel and cucumber roll. I was less thrilled with the Sada than I was the eel. I guess eating cooked fish at a sushi place falls under the category of ordering beef at a sushi place as well. It wasn’t terrible, but something about it just wasn’t amazing either. The eel and cucumber has just the perfect ratio of the two fillings to make it delicious. I finished my meal with the Botan nigir, which is raw shrimp tail on rice with a thin slice of lemon and the head of shrimp is fried and set next to it. Both parts of the Botan nigir were awesome; the best I’ve had in town – although it is not a dish for the timid or weak of stomach. The head of the shrimp is crunchy and salty but plays off the sweet flavors of the tail nicely. My girlfriend ordered an assortment of rolls for her dinner, her favorite being the sea urchin with raw quail egg, something I won’t eat even though I had just finished crunching a shrimp’s head, seaweed, monkfish liver and black tobiko (cavier-like fisheggs). She loved all of it except the monkfish liver, claiming “I’ve had better”.
I too have had better sushi, but i’ve also paid a lot more than I did at Sapporo. Our dessert was another bottle of warm sake which was perfect as it was getting a bit cold out on the patio where we were sitting. The patio is a nice touch to Sapporo – it feels pretty good to be sitting nearly on the ocean and enjoying the bounty that comes from it. Sure, I can think of a couple of better places to get sushi in Portland but for its price and quality, Sapporo makes for a good experience.