Saturday date night

Last Saturday, later in the evening, we decided we were hungry, and sushi sounded good.We headed out 71st street, and before we got to where we were planning to go, we saw a new restaurant called Suki. (sounds like sushi, right?)Unique dining, food cooked right at your table. Hmmm, I'm thinking something like Shoguns.Then I see read it's cooked right at your table....in a pot? Ok, so it's like The Cajun Boiling pot, except maybe not Cajun. I'm good with that, I think.We are seated and the chairs are elegant, high backed leather covered. The table is solid sculpted marble. The menus are wood, over an inch thick, yet have only three pages. Very exquisite to say the least. In the middle of this table that cost more than I make in a month is a sauce pan. A 6 quart sauce pan, just like my mama used to make chili.It sits upon a built in hot plate, and that is where our food is cooked? Well maybe just one course is cooked there, I don't know. There are very few entrees from which to choose, and they all are a little pricey, but what the hey. I am excited about this new eating experience. The choices are steak, seafood, lobster (market priced) and a combo of steak and seafood. We debated about splitting the steak and seafood, but our waitress advices that may not be enough food unless we just really aren't hungry, so Dana ordered the steak, and I order the seafood. We also ordered a sushi roll. The steak was a top quality sirloin, and the seafood consisted of mussels, scallops, and jumbo lobster prawns. Sounds good, huh?

Well, to begin, they bring out two small dished with some sort of cabbage, which smelled a little funky and had an odd texture. I opted out on that one. The salads were small, and the dressing that the waitress descibed as awesome was less than her description. Our sushi roll was pleasing to the eye, with shitake mushrooms standing tall from the end pieces, and bright red roe garnishing each slice. However, the "tuna" tasted more like shaved turkey, and was way to salty for my taste. Then, the saucepan was filled with a "specially seasoned vegetable stock". Mmmm. Then a platter of veggies were dumped in to the pan. There were leeks, a strange variant of lettuce, 2 red bell pepper wedges, 3 different kinds of mushrooms, something that looked like a pin wheel, some thinly sliced butternut squash, some asparagus, and some broccoli chunks that were somehow crossed with cauliflower. I was trying to have an open mind about all this, yet the horrid image of eyeballs floating around in the pot kept coming to mind. Now I do eat my fair share of vegetables, and helped myself to the mix with guarded expectations. The normal looking mushroom was not cooked quite enough, so I cut off the part I bit and put the remainder back in the pot to cook some more. Next, I tried the squash. It was crumbly, and had no flavor at all. Not bad, but not good. Next I had the shitake mushrooms, which seemed like rubbery spaghetti. The leeks were impossible to cut since no knives were furnished, so I skipped them. The broc/cauliflower again had very little taste. Then the other species of mushrooms, which looked like someones ear, tasted like a nice soft thick piece of leather. 

Next came the meat.The "steak" was shaved beef. Dana questioned the waitress about it, thinking we were getting a nice sirloin, maybe grilled? Medium rare?. Nope, just top quality beef, and shaved and cooked (boiled) right at out table in the saucepan that they cooked our veggies. Same seasoned vegetable stock. That's good, right? Cooked right in with the mussels, prawns (looked like plain old shrimp to me), and 2 HUGE scallops. The steak tasted like boiled meat with hints of a nice bland vegetable broth. The mussels were good. The prawns were probably no more than shrimp....not much taste, and tough to chew. Maybe I should have leaned on more of the 3 sauces provided, but none of them were particularly good to my taste. The scallops, however, were a nice surprise.... good texture and flavor, although I should have let them cook a little more. Dessert? We declined, fearing it also would be dumped into the pot of vegetable broth.

How much for this unique dining experience? We would have spent 35 bucks for sushi, 40-50 at Red Lobster, maybe 50-55 for Shoguns, but at Suki, we ended up paying 70 dollars for this "unique dining experience", including the tip. Plus, we had to cook the food ourselves!! Worst 70 I have ever spent!

I hope I don't seem like a dumb redneck not appreciating finer dining. I just had more boiled food than I wanted.