Kaz Sushi Bistro

This week it was my wife’s birthday. Fortunately for me, it fell on the day when I had no classes in the evening, so we could enjoy our family time uninterrupted.

As has been our tradition for the last few years, I took the family to a sushi place.

 My wife loves sushi, so it was a treat primarily for her. Since birthday in our culture is a big thing (even though we do not have parties with guests in our family for the occasion) we go to the best place we can find. We also go to a new place every year.

 I usually spend a few hours checking out online message boards with comments and reviews on sushi places in DC area. This year I chose Kaz Sushi Bistro. (1915 I (eye) Street, NW)

 The reviews and ravings I read about this place in advance were very favorable, with quite a few reviewers claiming it to be the ONE & ONLY Best Sushi place in the
whole Washington, DC area.

 The added benefit of going to this sushi place was that it was right outside the George Washington University campus. It gave me a chance to drive through the campus on the way there and have a little ‘show and tell’ bragging tour about the place where I go away from the family for my MBA classes a few nights a week.

 The place was indeed very popular. Even with advance reservation we had to wait about 10 minute before we got seated. Mind that it was about 7.30 PM on non-weekend night.

 The public was quite diverse. There were two small parties of ‘high flyers’, I mean literally, – people had their carry-ons with flight tags still affixed. Many younger and middle age couples, probably on a date night. There was also one company of about ten people who looked like students. Given the location of the place, I would not be surprised if they were also students from GWU.

 The place itself is pretty small. By my estimate it has no more than 50 seats at the tables, and probably five or six at the sushi bar. It is neat and cozy, though without any extravagant decoration. My wife called the interior style ‘Japanese minimalism’.

 The food was very good. We ordered quite a few items from the menu, as we like tasting various things on our dining out occasions. Signature small dishes are very true to their name – they are small. Reminded me of French restaurants with miniscule food on a big dish with sophisticated décor touch. Since we got a few of them we at least got a taste for different things. We liked them all, the one I remember the name was Crusted Fried Calamari. From salad section we chose Warm Mushroom & Baby Spinach. Even my kids, who do not usually volunteer for spinach, liked it.

 Main entries we usually share. We got Asian Style Teder Short Rob and Tempura Bento Box, Sashimi Moriawase, and one of Kaz Sushi Tastings.  My younger daughter just chose sushi rolls for herself.

 As I already said, everything was very delicious and delicate. One drawback – it is quite pricey for my ‘MBA student’ budget. It was OK to splurge for the occasion, but I could not afford to bring my whole family there casually.

 One more thing. I sometimes like to taste signature beer/wine/liquor at the restaurant if they have one. I am not big fan of sake, so I passed on that. They had the usual stock of Japanese beers, like Sapporo, Kirin Ichiban, which you can find pretty much anywhere. But what I really liked was KAZ Sushi Beer, red ale from a Shenandoah Brewing Co. That one I recommend.