Found a great sushi sleeper on the upper east side called Tokubei I must share. I love fish and although there are great places around Manhattan; some of the best places are overpriced and over hyped. The best place without a doubt is Sushi of Gari; the secret is getting the omakase or the chef’s special. They bring one piece out at a time and it is almost like going to an art show and is well worth the insane prices. Finding sushi for a decent price is quite the task in this environment of excess and gilded fancy places. The silly thing is they all get fish from the same place for the most part. So getting a nice plate of sushi is more than word of mouth its taste of mouth. Some people just have no clue about what tastes good and what looks good; texture and flavor are everything. I find the best way to judge any sushi restaurant is not by looks of the outside but from sitting at the sushi bar and quizzing the chef about what fish he has and when they brought it in. My favorite fish is amberjack commonly known as the baby yellowtail. Kampachi which is not yellowtail but amberjack is extra tasty and not common to the average sushi bar. I always ask for fluke fin and Uni or sea urchin. While Uni is common the fluke fin is rare and expensive. This shows they cater to real sushi lovers. The most common bar of this test is asking for the fatty tuna or toro. Some places will have great toro others will not even carry this part of the tuna. So when I order a plate I like to start with tuna and yellowtail and finish with sea urchin and or a yummy creamy Kumamoto oyster.

So usual prices run almost 6 to 10 dollars for one piece of toro Tokubei charges 5 for every exotic piece, even oysters. So for a regular piece of fish yellowtail or a tuna it’s only 2.50. This is a really cheap and amazingly high quality sushi bar. They are open late and have great selection; only no amberjack. But they have the best oysters and so extremely talented chef’s. One of the chefs is an older Japanese man who I call the master, the other is a much younger guy who I am unsure if he is Japanese but he is so creative and inventive with a nice bonus of speaking English well. I tell him the fish I would like and tell him to mix it up. He serves nothing but art dressed up and ready to make the most avid sushi lover drool. He does not disappoint when it comes to surprising my pallete. Another great place to try this is a little place called Tenzan which has multiple locations throughout the city. I was served a sea salt salmon that blew my socks off; and the strange thing is I don’t even like salmon. But I took some photos of what I didn’t inhale within seconds of seeing at Tokubei. I will make an extra effort to take photos of the fish I couldn’t help toss into my mouth faster than the chef could cut the fish. I took a picture of some eel, a couple of hamma hamma oysters, a roll of yellowtail, and a cooked tofu square plate that my friend ordered but tasted great. I will go back soon but I implore you to try my method of picking your favorite fish and telling the chef to mix it up. I view menus at sushi bar’s for people who don’t know what they want and get nothing but what a boring combination will bring…mediocrity.