THIS IS WHAT THEY CALL THE VOLCANO — a glistening cylinder with a craterous pink topping. The noncombustible edible — a rolled creation of dried seaweed, sushi rice, raw fish, condiments and sauce — is one of the specialty maki at über-hip Sake Tumi. In the Milwaukee Street restaurant’s early weeks, co-owner Omar Shaikh was giving away these unconventional rolls (the staff jokingly call them their “crack”) because diners were playing it safe with more orthodox variations.
Since the maki exposure, Shaikh says, “It’s been insane.” The rolls — in varieties like “Viva La Mexico” (yellowtail fish, tuna, avocado, jalapeño pepper, cilantro and mango jalapeño sauce) — have become a go-to dish at the multi-level Japanese/Korean restaurant.
Shaikh, a 33-year-old with an international business degree from Cardinal Stritch University, was scheduled to open Sake a year ago — it finally opened in February — but he won’t talk about the reasons for the delay. He does say that what got him through that suspended time was “knowing the food and ambiance would work.” Faith, the famous restaurant adhesive, is arguably as important as food and atmosphere.
Sake’s menu is a mix of the accessible and the offbeat. You could be phobic of raw fish and still get a fix here (from the cooked appetizers and entrées, Kobe beef, tempura and teriyaki). Or maybe you write odes to the unusual; that’s where the specialty makis and Korean dishes (kalbi, or short ribs, especially) come in. The menu is a three-part deal: traditional, Japanese fusion and Korean. I like the amalgam. But the restaurant is still a little rough in spots, a byproduct of being the limelight-stealing new kid. My servers were enthusiastic about the food, but there was confusion with the delivery of orders — longer-than-normal gaps between courses, the wrong dishes coming to the table. Time and experience should help.
Raised in Milwaukee, Shaikh put in time as an L.A. restaurant manager before returning to the Midwest. With Sake, he went into business with his aunt, who prepares the handful of Korean specialties — her family recipes — on the menu. The Japanese component is left to head chef Toshihisa Uehara, who has eight years as a sushi chef in Japan under his belt.
Snagging a Milwaukee Street location seems smart, given its renaissance, and a few years ago, Shaikh was getting a firsthand look as doorman at neighboring bars Eve, Tangerine and Kenadee’s. The Sake space starts with a narrow, brick-exposed main dining room with a long banquette of tables opposite a streaky paneled sushi bar. Art is minimal — a glass-enclosed kimono and a pair of statues that remind me of the Buddhas inside the Oriental Theatre. Servers wear black and tattoos. Behind the dining room are stairs that lead to the mezzanine and some 35 dining seats, plus a private tatami room. Shaikh has opened the second floor as the Kai Buddha Lounge, designed for several purposes: chilling until your table is ready downstairs, imbibing and listening to whatever the DJ is spinning.
In the busy months of April and May, I was at Sake dining on selections that ranged from just okay to hitting the bull’s eye. Where the restaurant really excels is at the sushi bar. I’ve had salmon, a couple of types of tuna, scallops, octopus and tilapia either on its own (sashimi) or with rice (sushi), and they were great. But I didn’t care for the nigiri fusion appetizer ($13.10), five pieces of sashimi each topped with a different sauce — red pepper vanilla, blueberry cilantro, miso ginger, citrus vinaigrette and sour cream and garlic. Each flavor was a spoken introduction — shy, assertive or discordant. Unfortunately, none had the compatibility of traditional wasabi (Japanese horseradish) and pickled ginger.
Some appetizers had a fizzling effect. The fresh summer spring roll was an attractive rice paper-wrapped bundle of sliced zucchini, red pepper, thin springy noodles and fresh cilantro, with a thick peanut dipping sauce ($5.10). Aside from being a devil of a thing to eat with chopsticks, the roll was disappointingly bland. And my tiny bowl of sunomono, a wafer-thin sliced cucumber and seaweed salad in sweet rice wine vinegar dressing ($4.10-$6.10), seemed skimpy. I don’t take issue with the flamboyance — or generous size (three times that of typical traditional rolls) — of the specialty maki I mentioned earlier, I just haven’t found one whose -flavors complement, not compete. “Spicy” appeared twice in the menu description of our Volcano, but the roll was only very wet: filled with mayo-heavy octopus, topped with tuna tartare and drizzled with unagi (a soy- and sake-based) sauce ($15.10).
But glimmers of light broke through the clouds. The spider roll, a common maki in Japanese restaurants, was as zesty, with a creamy-crunchy middle, as other good spiders I’ve eaten elsewhere. The filling is softshell crab, mayo, roe, cucumber and avocado ($8.10). Tempura (two shrimp, a mushroom and green pepper slice) was dead-on — deep-fried to a light, golden crisp ($6.10). And the grilled kushi yaki salmon — hunks of filet on toothpicks for easy eating — was flaky and tender ($6.10). But I wasn’t prepared to bite into some small bones. Ach.
But then, ahh. The entrées — those rays of light were starting to pour down. Sake is doing a couple of things that aren’t common in the city — Korean food and Kobe beef, the top-of-the-line stuff that comes from exceptionally pampered Japanese cattle. And it’s doing both of them well. As a primer to Korean cuisine, the most important things to know are grilled meat, rice and kimchee, a spicy pickled cabbage condiment. At Sake, they do a respectable bulgogi — the grilled beef, sliced thin, is a little oily and a lot tender ($12.10). The steamed rice balances out the meat’s saltiness and the kimchee’s pungency and heat. And sautéed matchstick vegetables are a nice texture contrast. My Korean crush, though, is on the grilled short ribs, called kalbi ($16.10). With a hint of sweet charcoal flavor, these rib pieces are firm but surprisingly tender. I’m having them again. We could have had Kobe beef wrapped in prosciutto or served in butter-basil sauce, but a simple grilled diced variant won out ($28.10). The meat, chopped small and cooked quickly on the hibachi, showed just how indulged the Kobe cattle are — it was so buttery-moist I could almost have eaten it without teeth. Almost.
A deliciously bumpy crust of chopped cashews protected three creamy oval cuts of halibut in a marvelous fusion entrée ($18.10). The edamame garlic butter did some subtle moistening work on the fish, not standing in the way of the shiitake mushroom rice — chewy, firm and rich like a risotto; bright and aggressive like a nicely done vegetarian main dish.
You wouldn’t have a million regrets ending the meal there. Ice creams and mochi balls (ice cream in a chewy rice shell similar to marshmallow) are shipped in. The house-made Fuji — an unpleasantly dry fried rice paper wrapper filled with chopped apple and cashews and drizzled with caramel — belied the decadent description the server gave it ($7.10).
Owner Shaikh is on the ride of long hours and chaotic days. But he sounds committed. While Sake isn’t perfect, there are joys to discover. And maybe that’s enough.
Sake Tumi
714 N. Milwaukee St.
224-7253
Hours: L Mon-Fri 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. D Mon-Wed 5-10 p.m.; Thurs-Sat 5 p.m.-12 a.m. Prices: soup, salads, appetizers $1.10-$13.10; sushi, sashimi, rolls $3-$15.10; entrées $10.10-$38.10; desserts $3.10-$8.10
Service: friendly and eager to make suggestions, but not seamless
Dress: Work the young, fashionable look. Smoking in lounge only
Handicap access: yes
Credit cards: M V A DS
Reservations: Mon-Thurs for any size party; Fri-Sat for six or more
