It’s nice to have a couple of Japanese and Korean restaurants in town. Yoshi’s Japanese and Korean Cuisine is one of them. Yoshi’s is nice, too. It’s like a Drew Barrymore romantic comedy: not too heavy, not much substance, humble; not the very best, but I never feel I’ve erred by choosing it.
I thought for years that Yoshi’s was primarily about sushi with a few other dishes thrown in for the skittish, but my opinion has changed: I like the sushi least and the other dishes best. Let’s start with what I like best: the Bento lunch box. I’m rarely knocked off my feet, but every visit, I cleaned my plate and felt good the rest of the day. You have probably heard of bento, a style of Japanese lunchbox. Often there’s a main protein, a vegetable, some rice, and several little bite-sized savory treats. In the shokado bento style each element is placed in its own section of a lacquered black tray. (For a thrillride of delicate, cute food, google “kyaraben” lunchboxes for kids, a neologism roughly meaning “character bento.”) I find something unassuming about adults ordering a lunch tray.
At Yoshi’s, $8.95 will get you miso soup and a bento box that includes rice, salad, a couple pieces of sushi roll, some pickled radish (sweet, mildly tangy and easy to like), a couple of fried bites, and the main course in whatever variety you prefer. I suggest the salmon teriyaki or vegetable tempura, if only because they are healthier than the beef bulgogi (marinated sirloin bits, a Korean style) and more interesting than chicken teriyaki. The bento is a nice quantity of food, and I finish satiated but not overfull.
I would not send you to Yoshi’s aiming for “the best” of anything. Folks argue about the the most melt-in-your-mouth otoro or the perfect in-season tomato. Neither of those here. Instead, I found budget ingredients cooked with some care. The salmon is no better than consumers can buy at the supermarket. On the other hand, that’s where I usually buy salmon. Consider the fried accountrements in the box: when you deep fry just a few items at a time – just enough for one or two bento boxes – the frying oil’s temperature doesn’t drop as much, so food heats more quickly, cooking and crisping before all the steam escapes and oil saturates and mushes the food (this is the downfall of most limp or soggy french fries). Small batches fry better, and I don’t need a biggie fries anyway, if you know what I mean. Presumably for the same reason, the tempura vegetables were always crisp on the outside, and warm on the inside, which brings out the sweetness of the plant – especially the carrots.
Yaki soba, or wheat noodles, is a fried noodle dish. Yoshi’s version is mildly seasoned, but balanced; you can taste salt up front, but the aftertaste is sweet and lingering. Skip the chicken, beef or seafood ($12.95) and stay with healthy vegetables ($11.95). The zucchini, peppers, broccoli, carrots, onions and scallions stay crisp even when taking in the sauce, unlike so many gloppy-sauced Chinise takeout places. Soba noodles range from street fare to fine art; just like Italian syndicates have done, someone’s decided that the best width of a soba noodle is 1.6 millimeters. It’s fine to use chopsticks to pull soba noodles into your mouth, leaving them to dangle while you slurp loudly. Taking in air by slurping cools the noodles, but also aerosolizes some of the sauce’s aromatic components, so you taste it more. That said, I imagine if you enjoy the food, and especially if it is new to you, the folks at Yoshi’s will be very happy for you to eat it however you please. They are not putting on airs, so to speak.
I liked the attention to texture in the udon (buckwheat noodles in broth; $8.95 for a plain lunch portion; $11.95 for dinner; a buck more to add shrimp or seafood). The thick noodles were soft and chewy, so that I could mush them with my tongue if I wanted. It’d be lovely on a wet, gray Autumn day (or, considering our recent weather, a wet, gray June day). The savory kakejiru broth arrived very hot – just off the boil, I bet – so slurp this one too, and let it cool.
As I mentioned, I am not particularly drawn to the sushi at Yoshi’s. I think it tends toward soft fish, which may be a sign that the fish has not been treated so well somewhere in the purveying process. I also find the rice fairly plain, with little sweetness and a dusty flavor, and sushi is meant to highlight good rice. I guess one could say the sushi is “back to its roots” as discount fast food, but I don’t know many folks who have stayed with the old ways; folks want the freshest fish and the peak experience. And there are several other options for sushi, both near Davis and around Somerville, so I will visit the other places instead. Also for gyoza, steamed dumplings, which I found mushy and unpleasantly flavored on the inside, while the dough on the rim had dried out – a failure.
Yoshi’s is family owned, but I wouldn’t have known save for the website. They have flown under the radar for years in Somerville, with no advertising that I know of and little chatter in food circles. Perhaps the restaurant’s modesty reflects the family. But Yoshi’s is worth getting to know.
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