Sushi at Coast

After a bit of a whirlwind weekend in Chicago seeing the sites and dealing with our cancelled flight, Nick and I were finally able to spend some time with our lovely hosts, C and S.  While we spent some time with C already, seeing them together is always a bit more fun!  Having covered many of our food bases already, we decided on sushi.  One of C's favorite places, Coast, was right down the street in Bucktown.  With a modern and fun atmosphere it makes for a great place to enjoy good company over some wine brought from home (yay for BYOB!).

I was actually the first person to take C to a sushi dinner.  It was some random NYC restaurant when were in high school, so needless to say we had no idea what were were ordering.  We ended up with some interesting rolls, including octopus and eel - why we chose those I still don't know.  In retrospect, salmon and tuna would have been some good starting points.  While eel is now one of my favorites, back then it definitely wasn't.  This is always a story we have to go over whenever C and I go out to sushi because it still makes us laugh!

After placing our white wine in some ice buckets we put an order in for Hamachi Carpacio, which had five pieces of yellow tail sashimi style topped with garlic olive oil, jalapano, and cilantro and was drizzled with lime juice and garnished with mixed greens with garlic balsamic dressing.  The fish was fresh and the citrus and jalapano added a perfect contrast. 

Hamachi Carpacio

In true Erica sushi ordering fashion, we got a serving of edamame.  All of the pods were filled and steamed well with the perfect amount of salt mixed in.   

Edamame

For some reason I was really cold - it was one of the first temperature drops welcoming us to fall, so I ordered a bowl of spicy miso soup (spicy soy bean soup with tofu, scallion, jalapeno).  Between the heat of the soup and the spice from the jalapenos mixed in the broth I was plenty warm.

SPICY miso soup

For the main sushi ordering, we basically went to town and ordered a ton.  Among some of the rolls we order were the SPIDER with fried soft shell crab, avocado, cucumber, mayo, and black tobiko; VOLCANO, with white tuna in hot volcano sauce with tempura crumb; DRAGON, with shrimp tempura, cream cheese, spicy mayo, unagi, avocado, masago, eel sauce; and UNA AVO, with fresh water eel, avocado, and eel sauce.

Platter 1 and plate 2

Platter 2

All the sushi was super fresh and delicious.  The menu offered up a great variety of rolls with unique flavor combinations.  I really enjoyed it all - there may have been only 1 piece of sushi left at the end of our meal.

When asked about dessert, even though we were full, we could not resist some of Coast's mochi ice cream.  I hadn't had mochi until my first trip to Coast about a year or two ago and had been waiting to having it again!  Varieties included red bean, green tea, mango, coffee, strawberry, chocolate chips, vanilla, chocolate mint, chocolate coconut, tiramisu, passion fruit, raspberry white chocolate.  Of course I had to order the chocolate coconut and it did not disappoint.  The rice outside had such a great consistency and works well with the creaminess inside. 

Mochi!

The sushi all had a really good price point compared to some other restaurants I've been to (especially since it was BYOB!).  At Coast the sushi is delicious with an atmosphere that brings you out from the more traditional Japanese style restaurant and into fun and contemporary surroundings.  What's not to love?!