Soto

I’ve walked past Soto many times after work or on my way to La Palapa on 6th Avenue and never realized it was a restaurant because it has an unmarked door and the windows are too small to get a good peek inside:

I made a late reservation for Friday night – 10:15 – and I was pretty hungry by the time I arrived at the restaurant. The restaurant is medium-sized; around 8 seats at the sushi counter, 7 or 8 tables behind the sushi counter, and another room with larger tables. The menu is quite large and has a combination of cooked foods and sushi – since we were so hungry, I took care of the ordering.

We started with fresh water eel from Taiwan with pickled cucumbers and seaweed:

And then made our way to the uni tempura with uni powder:

My date was on the fence on whether or not he liked uni to begin with but I thought this might be a good dish to ease into the somewhat acquired taste of uni – fried yet still very delicate and the dish still captured the original briny taste of the sea urchin.

Next, the most special dish of the night, steamed lobster with uni mousse:

The lobster was tender and chilled and made such an interesting pairing with the uni mousse. The lotus root wrapped around the lobster and uni added just enough crunch (without stealing the spotlight from the delicate flavors of the uni and lobster). The uni was slightly sweet and it was another great dish for someone that’s not incredibly into the texture of uni.

My least favorite dish of the evening was definitely the tuna tartare roll:

The roll comes with spicy tuna tartare, asian pear, cucumber, avocado, sesame, pine nuts, scallions, and a white kelp wrap and had so many different flavors that it was confusing and not tasty at the same time. We were both starving when we arrived at the restaurant and the table next to us ordered the same thing so we followed suit. I thought the pear and pine nuts really destroyed the taste of the roll and really regretted ordering it.

Another hot dish from the kitchen was the braised black cod with Japanese vegetables:

We both enjoyed the dish and when we were reviewing all of our favorites from the meal, this was consistently at the top of both of our lists.

I also ordered a couple pieces of nigiri:

The toro was probably my favorite but I’m also a sucker for anything with yuzu zest and sea salt (the scallop pieces on the right).

Soto’s dessert menu is pretty basic but we ended up ordering mochi because my date loves it:

Overall, I thought the cooked foods were much more impressive than any of the nigiri or rolls we tried; I definitely plan on returning and eating a lot more uni.