No one can accuse Bruce Lee of having a limited imagination. No, not that Bruce Lee, silly. Wrong nationality, to begin with.
This Bruce Lee is from Korea and he's one of our city's more creative sushi masters. Recently, he opened Sushi Avenue Steak House, in a new development west of Flamingo and the 215, a fast-growing area. And it's fast becoming a neighborhood favorite, despite the restaurant having ... well ... a split personality.
It's an odd phenomenon that many of our most popular sushi restaurants, such as Henderson's I Love Sushi and the west side's Sushi Fever, are Korean, not Japanese- owned. Lee has impressive credentials in the genre. He worked at Mandalay Bay and later had the well-received Dragon Sushi in the Chinatown Plaza Mall before decamping to this location, an impressively constructed space featuring three giant teppan griddles, complete with gleaming, stainless-steel, hooded, overhead vents in the dining room.
That's the confusion. There is a long sushi bar at one end of the restaurant; booths to sit in, framed by glass dividers painted with cherry blossoms; and the teppan grills, each one seating eight, Benihana-style. Soft, romantic lighting is provided by a series of spherical globes that descend from the ceiling like spacecraft.
So is this a sushi bar or a teppan restaurant? It just depends on your mood, I surmise.
The options don't stop there. There is a substantial menu of Japanese kappo, or bar dishes, as well as complete dinners, not to mention a list of goofy hand rolls with variety second to none here in Vegas. Sink your teeth into a Fear Factor roll: sea urchin, salmon egg, freshwater eel and a hit of cream cheese. Or perhaps the Screaming Orgasm. (Come again? Pun intended.). It's a delicious invention of tuna with spicy garlic sauce.
My wife, friends and I chose to sit in a booth because there are small, plasma-screen TVs mounted inside each of them, a feature that has become quite commonplace in Korean joints in New York and LA during the past 10 years or so. Oddly, there was no music during most of the evening, until later when suddenly some oddball techno-pop came pulsating through the sound system.
We had small communication problems with our Korean waitress but her charm made them easy to bear. First came two pieces of nigiri sushi wrapped in nori seaweed and topped with Day-Glo orange smelt roe—very good—and then a terrific spicy tuna roll, and I mean eyes-watering spicy.
The sushi was followed by bowls of steamy miso soup, and a pair of nice salads tossed with sesame oil-based dressing, both of which are included with any complete dinners.
One of those dinners was katsu don, a pork cutlet breaded with panko—Japanese-style bread crumbs that are pan-fried and cut into strips. The cutlet is eaten with rice in Japan, but Lee serves his on a bed of mashed potatoes with red cabbage. The accompanying sauce, tonki sauce in Japanese, is a thick, soy-based, mahogany-colored paste, and best used sparingly.
We also tried one of the chef's specialties: green tea steak, a char-grilled New York cut with a mild, medicinal sauce that complemented the beef nicely. The steak was just fine, thank you, and would have been perfectly all right on its own.
It's possible to have what the menu calls a hibachi dinner—really one of those dinners cooked on the teppan grill by a chef flashing, slicing and dicing—brought to your booth if you do not care to sit at the grill. But do that and you will miss the show, not to mention the camaraderie of sharing your table with complete strangers, sometimes a questionable pleasure.
The hibachi menu is also a complete dinner, with prices ranging from around $19.95 to $32.95 for lobster and filet mignon. We tried the swordfish and shrimp—both excellent—on a giant platter accompanied by a medley of soy flavored, stir-fried veggies. For $2 extra, I recommend you exercise the fried-rice option: tasty, crunchy rice the chef prepares in a small mountain on the teppan.
If you come casual, just wanting to share a large bottle of Japanese beer, then try a dish like salmon-skin salad or any of the appetizers, all salty, pub-style dishes intended to create a thirst. I especially like asparagus bacon (spears of asparagus wrapped in meaty, smoky bacon) or gyoza (delicate, Japanese pot stickers), but edamame (salted, boiled green soy beans) or any of the expertly battered fish, shrimp or vegetable tempura dishes are fine, as well.
Sushi Avenue Steak House pushes all the right buttons, and is doing so in an area hungry for good restaurants. Now, maybe someone will open a good Korean restaurant in this town.