mediocre -placeis 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 a fish appetizer 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 whole fish cooked 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 another fish in 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.