Home » Travel » Washington, D.C. » Great Sushi Five Steps Down

Great Sushi Five Steps Down

© Eugenia E. Gratto

P Street NW, just off Dupont Circle, is home to an eclectic batch of restaurants. From great seafood to authentic Italian to Chicago-style pizza, there's plenty to eat and lots of people-watching to do.

But no matter how many times I head down that busy street in search of a meal, it seems like nine times out of ten I end up at Sakana, which is my hands-down favorite sushi restaurant in the city.

Sakana probably isn't the best sushi restaurant out there, and it's not even the only one within a couple of blocks—in fact, there are at least two other sushi restaurants just steps away. But it offers a unique combination that makes it hard to beat and brings me back again and again.

I've been going to Sakana since 1997, and other than maybe one server, the faces there don't change. There's always the same hostess/waitress, the one who never understands me and my friend Rebecca, another avid sushi eater, when we try to ask her to get the sushi chefs to make us something special and inspired that might not be on the menu. The chefs don't seem to change, either. It seems like it's always the same three guys behind the sushi bar, squeezing the rice into oval-shaped lumps and slicing rolls as fast as they can. They only look up to wave goodbye and thank patrons for eating when people are on their way out the door.

The best way to start a meal at Sakana is with a steaming bowl of miso soup, followed by a bowl of their salad. The salad is nondescript, really. It's just a bowl of iceberg lettuce and carrot shreds with some cabbage thrown in for extra color. But the ginger dressing, rich with oil, rice wine vinegar, and shreds of shallots, makes it special. When the lettuce has long disappeared, I often find myself dipping my chopsticks in the rest of the dressing just to taste it one more time before the waiter or waitress whisks the bowl away.

I haven't had much of the rest of Sakana's menu other than the sushi. But I have eaten there with friends who have enjoyed the chicken teriyaki, and I have tasted their tempura, which is as light and airy as I expected it to be.

The sushi is really the reason to visit. The chefs artfully arrange it on lovely boards, ceramic plates, or large round lacquered platters. The fish is always at the peak of freshness, and I am addicted to their unagi, the freshwater eel that is cooked and slathered with a sweet sauce. The tuna is always good, and the spicy tuna rolls burn the sinuses just enough, but not so much that you don't want to eat any more.