mediocre - place is a joke. i am a self-confessed sushi addict. i discovered sushi shortly after college, and it has quickly become a bad and expensive habit. i am also a "sushi purist". i like my sushi very authentic. i look down on people who eat deep fried/cream-cheesed/sauced up/chickened/beefed up sushi rolls. yes technically sushi is the rice, therefore you could slap whatever you want on the inside of a rice roll, but i believe sushi should be eaten only with fish/other seafood. i was in the piedmont triad area on business last week and as usual had to satisfy my sushi habit. granted, i knew i was in the south and should have suspected i was getting myself into a situation not quite ideal (there i go... stereotyping... more to come on this). but no level of expectation management prepared me for the shock i was about to experience at akashi. i will break it down into three categories - good, bad and ugly.
the good -
everyone was nice. i pulled up to the parking lot and these japanese men and women were getting into their cars (presumably just dined here) and they all waved and said hi - i thought that was really nice. the chef (presumably the owner) and his wife (or so i assumed) were also very nice, almost to the point of becoming overbearing.
the bad -
it was freezing in there. i live in the midwest, so freezing is the new norm, but i thought being the south everyone liked it warmer (stereotyping again) blah blah. i was also cheerfully offered a fork when i placed my offer. its always been my experience that you're never offered a fork unless you ask for it or if its rolled up with your dinner napkin. i wonder why she thought i needed a fork.
the ugly -
i scanned through the menu trying to order afishappetizer and proceeded to ask the waitress what a particular item on the menu was (and here's where it all went downhill). she said "oh that? you dont want it, only the asians eat that stuff. its weird - its a wholefishcooked with all the bones in it... blah blah blah." i was livid. yeah i'm not asian, but that doesnt mean i dont have the right to know what a dish is or that i wont be interested in it. so i thought "ok, if i make her understand that i am comfortable with eating a bony fish, she'd tell me what it was", so i asked "well, what exactly is it, i might be interested". she just repeated dismissingly that its not a normal dish and she recommended i go with a different item. i was too hungry to press the issue further so i did. i ordered a rainbow roll and a california roll, because i figured these were the two hardest to mess up. luckily, the food came out pretty quickly, however the both rolls were missing one key ingredient - avocado. in all the years i've been eating sushi, i have never had a rainbow or cali roll that did not have avocado. instead avocado had been replaced with carrots in the california, and anotherfishin the rainbow. also the slices were very different sizes - sure i wasnt expecting perfect cuts, but some were about half the size of the other. i expect some sort of pride in the workmanship but clearly this was not the case. the rice tasted a little stale - must have been near the bottom of the cooker or something
to top it all off, they didnt accept american express so i had to charge my meal to my personal card versus a business expense card. this last bit wasnt even a big deal, except it just happened to be the icing atop a very crappy cake.
needless to say, i will never go back here, neither will i recommend it to anyone, and certainly never call it an authentic sushi place.