Enso

Sexual Bar

The Food Baby bottom line:

• This place just screams SEXY!
• Seriously perfect sashimi and creative sushi rolls
• Is 30 dollars a lot for lunch?

Brianna and I had a Food Baby Meeting of the Minds at Enso last week. We're thinking about redesigning the site (sweet!) and had a brainstorming sesh. Sushi seemed necessary.

Enso is located at the ground level of the Epicentre, and when we arrived at 11:30 AM the lunch crowd had yet to show up. Enso has the kind of ridiculously sexy interior that I love.
It's so over the top. Behold:



 

Dining Room



Spoiler: I am about to dish my only complaint about the experience. Bri and I both ordered unsweet ice teas, mine with splenda on the side. Yes, there's a reason I'm telling you this. Our server walked away, and returned a moment later to declare that he had a "brain fart" and had forgotten our drink orders. I was irrationally disturbed by that. I mean, I have an extremely foul mouth, and am not easily grossed out...but something about mention of, ahem, flatulence - in a sushi place - for some reason gave me the heebies. Am I overreacting?

All was forgiven when the food starting flying out. Everything was extremely dankalicious!

Brianna started with Miso Soup and I had a Ginger Salad. Both were right on par. I especially liked the scallions on my salad, and I appreciated that the dressing was not the unnatural electric orange color you see sometimes.

Ginger Salad

Miso horny! (Couldn't resist)

We decided to split a Fire Roll: Cucumber, avocado, crab tempura, topped with a torched scallop, scallions, a sweet glaze, ponzu sauce, and chili sauce. How effing good does that sound? It was delicious - certainly not as spicy as I would have expected from the description, but super yummy. Very balanced in flavors - a little spice, some sweetness, a hint of citrus. Almost as good as my fave roll at Enso (which we didn't have this particular day) which is the Mango Roll. Try it or we're not friends.



Fire Roll

We also ordered some sashimi: Tuna, Yellowtail, and Red Snapper. What can I say except that it was fresh....melt in your mouth...perfection. I was having an emotional affair with the tuna, while Brianna was having an emotional affair with the yellowtail right next to me. My affair with the snapper was less emo - there was nothing wrong with it, but I just prefer the taste and texture of the other two. Fabulous.

And....look at this presentation! Call me impressed:



Lovely sashimi



Close up...loving the flowers!

Before departing, we had some adventures in the ladies room (insert raunchy joke here). I love gorgeous restaurant bathrooms, and this is one of them. However, it's a bit of a hazardous labyrinth of mirrors. Navigating the bathroom drunk is not for the faint of heart. Check this out:

Gorg

Inexplicably huge bench/throne

This is INSIDE a stall. Tell me this would not freak your drunk ass out.
PS. Yes I took this picture. I wont judge you for judging me.

We split everything, and with tip it came out to 30 bucks. That's a bit steep for lunch, isn't it? The Fire Roll was 15 bucks itself! I suppose that is not so crazy for high quality sushi in a downtown location.  Our lunch choices (ie - sashimi instead of another rice-y roll) left us with intense Houdini Food Babies. You could probably fill up more for the same moolah with different selections. But I have no regrets because that sashimi was so out-of-control delish.

-Lauren