Shun (meaning "fresh/in season" - pronounced more like shoo-n) is a welcome addition to Seattle's Japanese food scene despite its pun-prone name, located just north of U-Village at 25th & Blakeley behind the 76 gas station (across from Roundtable Pizza). It's a nice enough restaurant to take a date to with nice, solid Japanese food, minus all the ego that sometimes seem to accompany some of the Japanese restaurants in Seattle (naming a restaurant after oneself is usually a dead giveaway for those).
It seems like Japanese restaurants in Seattle usually fall into one of two camps:
- Fancy and expensive with often "inventive" approach or "cool" menu; nice (expensive) interior touches; location, location, location in a nice neighborhood; usually started by someone who claims to be skilled and famous; OR
- Old-fashioned, often dingy/hole-in-the-wall, "traditional", with good homey food.
I'm of course generalizing and there are others which are good and fall somewhere in between like Kisaku and Hiroshi's, but they tended to have a more decidedly casual feel. Shun is none of the above. It has nice enough understated interior - its minimalist and not over-the-top, dark colored wood accents and nice subdued lighting tell you you're not necessarily paying for the expensive antique tansu they bought to be extra cool. It’s still somewhat casual and laid-back but much nicer than those really casual restaurants which are not even trying, and it’s nice enough to make the meal into a nice date (when you’re not feeling kitsch to go to somewhere like Maneki).
They have 8 sushi bar seats which fill up pretty quickly despite the fact it just opened, and maybe 15 tables, with a few more on the patio. The patio faces a pretty busy street and past that is Burke-Gilman Trail and Silver Cloud Inn Hotel and U-Village, so maybe it doesn't have the best view, but it’s decent when it’s nice out, and the service was just as attentive as inside.
The food has been very fresh and authentic. No gimmicks or tricks here. Good solid sushi (very good toro – they have had o-toro, which is the highest grade of toro, and they can serve it up to you both fresh and flash-broiled for variety in texture) and very pleasant sushi chefs. Kotaro-san, part owner/chef, used to work at Shiro’s, but he’s not the kind to brag about it. Ryuji-san is another modest chef who’s eager to please. (Only 8 seats at the bar and the small size of the restaurant work well – it’s probably about the max capacity which can be handled satisfactorily with two sushi chefs.) We’ve come across good o-toro, aji, hokki-gai (surf clam), and sweet shrimp. You can then ask them to cook the sweet shrimps’ heads in one of couple of ways (fried, salt-broiled, etc.) and eat them like crackers, just like they would in Japan. The only glitch I’ve encountered when sitting at a table was when we had an omakase sashimi plate, which included excellent o-toro, but the fillets looked more like kiriotoshi (end cuts) – so the presentation wasn’t perfect, but the flavors were good.
The cooked food is equally good. Nasu dengaku (broiled eggplant) with two-colored miso was fresh tasting with one of the miso incorporating shiso flavor. A good smooth chawanmushi (Japanese hot custard) without su (air pockets in hardened custard caused by too high a heat/pressure) is hard to make, but they passed that test, as well. They are still working out some kinks in the kitchen and service, so it took them a long time to arrive (and one of the waitresses didn’t understand what I was trying to order at first), but we were profusely apologized to and compensated by free desserts. Their osuimono (clear soup) with clams is also good and a nice break from the standard miso soup. Grilled fish like cod kasuzuke are also very tasty.
Sake and beer selection is nice and sufficient (about 8 kinds) and it goes up to some good ones like Mu if you want to splurge; certainly not as extensive as a place like Saito’s (and a bottle of Mu costs $5 more than one at Chiso), but for a neighborhood restaurant it’s more than enough, and you can have them in a masu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masu , which is a bonus.
I’m admittedly biased as they are within walking distance from our home, but all in all they have disappointed me (picky eater from Tokyo) very little and the experience has been more pleasing, to a surprising extent. I’d say Shun is a truly welcome addition to the Seattle’s often limited Japanese food scene.
more