Many of our sushi bars and so-called Japanese restaurants are Korean- or Taiwanese-owned, and serve watered-down versions of true Japanese cuisine. But Koto Japanese Restaurant, which belongs to Toshiaki and Mary Beth Horiai, is Japanese through and through, from the sushi bar to the servers, and the superior quality of what you eat here should serve as a lesson to the competition.
The gracious Mary Beth, who is not Japanese, met her husband while working in show business in Japan, and she speaks the language like a native. Her husband is the guy with the white sushi cap behind the counter. He graduated from Morombo, a top Tokyo cooking school, and before opening Koto, one of his many postings was sushi man at Shintaro in Bellagio.
A koto is a 13-stringed Japanese harp you often hear twanging in the background during Japanese movies, though the music you're more likely to hear while dining here is contempo Japanese pop. This is a small restaurant, hard by a barbecue place and a Jersey Mike's sub shop in a Henderson mini-mall, and as such, appointments are simple and functional.
There are wooden tables and chairs spaced intelligently apart atop an earthen-colored tile floor, and wooden chopsticks resting on hashi-oki, ceramic chopstick stands designed to prevent the part of the utensils that go into your mouth from touching the tabletops. The eight-seat sushi bar is in the rear. Behind it, out of sight, is the hot kitchen.
One of the most important things at a Japanese restaurant is the quality of the dashi, or soup stock, because it flavors so many of the dishes. Here, the dashi is delicious, nicely reduced and redolent of its main components: kombu seaweed, shiitake mushrooms and shaved bonito flakes (katsuobushi, if you are heading to a Japanese market to buy it).
You'll also notice that the quality of the sushi rice is exceptional. Sushi, or vinegared rice, doesn't have to contain fish and can really use any topping, providing it is resting on a clump of rice. What makes Horiai-san's sushi so accomplished is that the rice has a slightly moist, never-cloying texture, the perfect amount of vinegar to give it tang but not sourness, and it is properly portioned in thumb-sized hunks.
If you start with sushi, the quality is impeccably fresh, whether albacore tuna, hamachi or yellowtail, uni or sea urchin, or any of dozens of other possibilities. I would recommend the omakase, or chef's choice, a multi-course feast that allows the chef to riff and serve whatever he thinks is best that day.
You might start with cucumber sunomono, tiny slices of the vegetable laced with shrimp in a Japanese-style vinaigrette. Then there will probably be sashimi, slices of raw fish, and later, a deep-fried course such as shrimp in their shells or the chef's light, crisp fish and vegetable tempura.
If you're lucky, he'll serve the savory Japanese custard, chawan mushi, steamed in a chawan or teabowl, and stocked with goodies like chicken, shrimp and gingko nuts. For a broiled dish, it might be gindara saikyoyaki: buttery, meltingly soft black cod marinated in white miso, imparting mysterious, penetrating flavors. Any of these items can, and should, be ordered a la carte, as well, although in a few cases, you'll have to ask for the special Japanese menu to do so. Have no fear, though—it's bilingual.
There are many dishes on the regular menu that I'd come back for, too. One is hamachi pepa, delicate slices of yellowtail topped with shards of green onion and oroshi, grated vegetables, served in a ponzu-flavored soy sauce. Another is agedashi dofu, cubes of fried tofu accompanied by a delicious dipping sauce.
Horiai-san also is a master of all things broiled. I love his tsukune—soy-glazed balls of ground chicken broiled on wooden skewers—almost as much as his black cod, and a quirky creation called foil chicken and salmon, which comes to the table piping hot.
Other little nibbles not to miss include gyoza, Japanese pot stickers, (crunchier on the outside than their Chinese counterparts, lighter and less meaty in the filling); nasu torimisu, chunks of broiled Japanese eggplant suspended on a salty paste composed of finely ground chicken and miso; and horenso gomaae, cooked spinach with white sesame paste, an irresistible combination.
There are lots of other reasons to come here, from a $23 all-you-can-eat sushi menu (which includes a number of the chef's good cooked dishes, too), terrific lunch combos for $7.95, like chicken katsu (sort of a breaded cutlet), and a riot of noodle dishes and soups I don't have space to mention.
Koto offers high-end Japanese dining at affordable prices, in a setting as harmonious as a Japanese harp in full musical flight. Music, maestro, please.