I have been saddened by the quality and price of sushi after moving to California. Apparently spoiled by the glories of Japanese delicacies and fresh, unpolluted waters of Vancouver sushi providers, my sushi bar is higher than most. (Ha! Sushi bar!) Anyhow, horrible puns aside, most of the sushi I’ve eaten in the South Bay area has been over priced crap and that is annoying. I have since found jewels hidden among the numerous stealth mini malls. One of these pearls is Kanpai Sushi on Lytton Ave in downtown Palo Alto.

Dustin is not down with the raw fish, so we were looking for a place that offered a wide variety of cooked Japanese food items. Kanpai delivered with a fabulous duck dish and shrimp appetizer. I was in heaven as soon as I saw the sake samplers and the offer of sake pairings with your meal. They also had the option for a ‘chef’s option’ three course meal along with sake for maximum tastiness.

I needed me some fish though, so I ordered the sashimi dinner. For $20 I got the requisite miso soup, a tempura yam sushi appetizer and a small but amazing Japanese salad with ingredients I couldn’t place (which thrills me). The meal also called for nine pieces of sashimi. I humbly requested no Ika, Uni or Tako, because I don’t like the texture and Uni tastes like stomach lining to me. They had no issues with this and gave me an assortment of six fish (Sake, Hamachi, Maguro, Toro, Ebi and Saba) and threw in some extra pieces for good measure.

Kanpai Sushi
330 Lytton Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 325-2696

Between the sake, which was blowing my mind at this point, and the free pieces, I was in full sushi bliss. The server was super sweet too and indulged me by reading the labels of the sake bottles and explaining which regions they came from. Definitely a place to return to and gorge on more sashimi in the future.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Restaurants. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.