March 13, 2008
By: Brian Freedman
bfreedman@aroundphilly.com
If you haven’t been to the restaurant space in the ground floor of Academy House since it ceased being the short-lived (and spectacularly named) Smoked Joint, the cognitive dissonance you’re likely to experience isn’t going to be as dramatic as you might expect.
Sure, there are few cuisines as diametrically opposed as the barbecue and soul food of America and the fish and seafood of Japan. But in the case of the Joint and Kaizan, the latter of which opened three months ago in the space that was once occupied by the former, a surprisingly similar philosophy is brought to bear on the dining experience: service that’s casual almost to a fault and food whose weight and conception lean more in the direction of overabundance than elegance.
This, of course, is easier to pull off if your food is slathered in cheese, barbecue sauce, and various iterations of pig fat. When it comes to Japanese-style dining, however, a gentler hand is called for. And that’s where Kaizan needs the most work.
Bamboo maki, for example, was theoretically built on the unexpected juxtaposition of crab meat and fresh-water eel. But the creamy avocado atop it and the sweet barbecue-like “eel sauce” painting the plate beneath it made it difficult to focus on the meat.
Stuffed salmon, which arrived looking like a plateful of pale-pink maki, used thin-ish slices of grilled salmon in a role usually played by nori. Avocado, chopped shrimp, and asparagus were wrapped up in it, a good idea whose reality was, unfortunately, less than stellar, primarily because the salmon was overcooked and dry, and the combination of components inside it possessed no discernible flavor profile of its own.
In fact, I had been vacillating between that dish and the unagi donburi, a bed of sushi rice topped with vegetables and barbecued eel. And I should have known not to follow the waiter’s advice. Upon asking him which one he preferred, he paused for a moment, leaned over my menu to see what, exactly, I was talking about, and then made his pronouncement: The salmon, he said, because—and oh how I wish I were making this up—it’s stuffed with more things.
Had he tasted it before? Had he ever seen the menu before? Should a choice between $22 entrees ever come with a heaping side dish of menu-ignorance? Whether this is a wait-staff problem or a management problem is irrelevant; it is a problem no matter who foots the blame.
There were other issues, too, and at three months old, they should be worked out by now. Not the least of them was the fact that the entirety of our meal, with the exception of an oddly cake-textured “tempura-fried” green-tea ice cream, was delivered within a five-minute span, resulting in a scene reminiscent of Audrey Griswold’s nightmare in National Lampoon’s European Vacation. There we were, two people at a four-top, with plate after plate stretching out beside us like some sort of glutton’s naughty dream.
There were some winners, of course, most notably the volcanic mountain, a deep-fried pyramid of soy-paper-wrapped, spicy tuna- and lobster-stuffed rolls accompanied by a mildly spicy wasabi sauce. And the sea urchin-topped baked sea scallop exhibited the kind of attention to detail that so many other preparations here lacked. As for the sushi, it was perfectly serviceable if unremarkable.
But there were just too many other problems here for run-of-the-mill sushi to compensate for. The list of wines by the glass, for example, is well thought out (especially the whites), but it is impossible to order sake the same way. Being forced to buy a 300ml bottle is no way to make guests feel welcome. Most people, after all, know precious little about sake, so forcing them to purchase a bottle of something they’ve likely never tasted before is something beyond bewildering.
In a city that’s home to ever more Japanese restaurants, the newest ones need to make sure that they stand out for the right reasons. And while the remodeling and redecorating of the physical space has rendered it utterly appealing, the philosophy and execution buttressing it all still needs a lot of work.
