Ah So Sushi and Steak: Yuma

Mmm-yoso is Kirk's wonderful foodblog. Sometimes he lets Cathy and others share their meals with you. In his last post, ed (from Yuma) discussed a wonderful Japanese meal in San Diego County. This post is different.

Most of us Yuma locals were excited a few years ago when we got an allegedly Japanese restaurant: Some of my enthusiasm melted away when a group of us came in for a Friday lunch, and somehow my order got lost in the system.  At first, the server didn't even seem to notice that one of us had not received a meal.  When I finally tracked her down and re-placed my order, the food still didn't arrive.  When I finally located a manager — and that required finding the bartender and explaining everything to him — the manager insisted that my wait was not extraordinary since the time on the computerized order was only 20 minutes previous.  I had to explain everything twice, before he understood that I had been in the restaurant for nearly an hour and that my friends had already finished their meals and I hadn't gotten a simple sushi combo yet. I was hungry, and when hungry, I get crabby.

Nonetheless, I decided to give the restaurant another chance.  I doubt if I will ever forget that visit as I sat at the sushi bar and ordered various nigiri.  As the itamae was bragging that the chain had restaurants in 44 different states, he was preparing me an order of saba, pouring vast quantities of sauce over the fish. Why? One foul and nasty taste answered that question and told me that the fish was, like Nemerov's Goosefish,"most ancient and corrupt and grey."  The horror. I shudder everytime I think about it. The single worst sushi I have ever been served. Ever.

Hope does spring eternal, however, and when I saw that Ah So had been voted the best Asian restaurant in Yuma, I decided to give it another couple of shots.  Maybe it had gotten better.

When I showed up both times at lunch, I tried to come with an open mind.  I was pleased that icewater arrives with a lemon slice that I didn't even need to request: The miso soup is consistently thin, light but balanced in flavor, and lacking almost any content except for a couple shards of seaweed, a  few thin circles of green onion, and on one visit, a cube of tofu the size of a garden pea.  Nonetheless, it was certainly satisfactory: For my first visit, I decided to order something safe, something almost impossible to screw up, tempura: At first glance, this looked okay.  There were several sizable shrimps and assorted vegetable pieces nicely arranged into a tower on the plate.

But when I looked more closely, I couldn't see any of the delicate lace like crunchies that typify a Panko crust: Putting aside any concerns, I started with the onion ring; after all, I've liked almost every onion ring I've ever eaten, at least to some extent.  Well, not this one.  First, there seemed to be no onion, at least none that I could taste.  In fact, the only taste the ring had was stale cooking oil and greasy breading.  Truly unpleasant.

The next item I tried was a slice of, I think, sweet potato: What I mean is that it looked sort of like it had some sweet potato in at, but the paperthin vegetable was overwhelmed by the greasy coating.

After wiping the grease off my fingers,  I attacked one of the large shrimp, biting off the end.  But there was no shrimp there.  The last half-inch of the shrimp shaped thing I had put in my mouth was simply breading.  After I peeled off the dense exterior, my large shrimp turned into something slightly smaller than my little finger, a truly shrimpy shrimp: It was also desiccated and flavorless.  Yuck!

When I was finished, I left behind a nearly full bowl of unappetizing breading: To be fair, I wanted to give the place one more chance, so I returned to try a sushi combo.  The $12 combination arrived at my table looking very pretty: The chef had done a good job arranging the items so that the colors were balanced.  It really was an attractive and inviting tray.

The California roll was decent.  While the sushi rice could have been seasoned better, at least the roll was not packed with mayonnaise.  In the mouth, I could not detect the flavor of the krab or wasabi, but the creamy avocado was pleasant and the cucumber crunch was a nice contrast.

The tuna, even with its neon pink color, was okay, although it finished with a slight background metallic flavor that I found marginally unpleasant.  But mostly, it seemed a bit dried out and had very little flavor of any sort at all: Ditto the whitefish: It is possible that this was hirame, but it could've been any mild whitefish for all the flavor that it had.

One of the highlights of the nigiri was, oddly enough, the krab.  This was good quality imitation crustacean and was the most moist and flavorful thing I put into my mouth during the entire meal.

The ebi was okay as well, though a bit dried out and having only a very mild shrimp flavor.  Again, however, the item seemed severely underseasoned.  This time after I only bit off half of the piece, I lifted the remaining shrimp off of the rice ball and discovered why all the nigiri had been exceptionally bland.  There was no wasabi anywhere.

Perhaps the restaurant expects that its customers are going to drown their sushi in the brownish swamp that forms when you stir an entire serving of wasabi into a couple tablespoons of soy sauce.  And maybe if I had done that, there would've been more flavor to each of the pieces — but not a flavor I enjoy much anymore.

The worst single piece of fish was the albacore: It tasted tired and a little off.  It was also mushy in texture and left an unpleasant aftertaste that lingered long after the meal was finished. I hate bad albacore burps.

The salmon was certainly better than the albacore, but like so many other items, it lacked much depth of flavor, richness, or intensity. No way unpleasant, just passably mediocre: I saved the tamago for last.  Mostly, it was sweet and dense.  Still, not really bad at all.  In fact, the sushi combination was adequate enough that I could eat it again, though most likely, not again real soon.

In other words, I still don't like this restaurant very much. So how did this place get voted #1? Well, it is located at the mall and seems to be a popular dating location. It serves alcohol. Maybe in the company of an attractive friend, after several beers, the food seems pretty good.

Still, I think the restaurant should change its name.  Instead of "Ah So," how about "Ah Ful So So," or maybe "So So Ah Ful"? Those seem right to me.

Ah-So Sushi & Steak, 1325 S Yuma Palms Pkwy, Yuma, AZ 85365 (928) 329-7442