Shimizu Sushi
4290 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, CA
http://shimizucuisine.com/ 
Review date: August 2012

This was a rare Monday night dinner, as we're leaving for the Sonoma Coast tomorrow and didn't want to have the inevitable home-cooking leftovers sit in the refrigerator for the next four days. We had walked by this popular little sushi restaurant a few weeks ago, on our way to LoCoco's/Oakland. Later I checked out the reviews on Yelp, which were highly favorable. We decided to try dinner here to compare it with our long-time fav, Ta-Ke. 

This is a small, modest-sized restaurant, which accounts for the lines of Yelpers waiting outside. They also happen to be one of the few buildings with its own parking lot, albeit as modestly sized as their dining room. On space-challenged Piedmont Avenue with its many shops and competing restaurants, this in itself almost guarantees success.

Shimizu offers a large menu of appetizers/small plates and sushi rolls with several lesser-seen dishes, such as monkfish liver. Carlos went straight for the sashimi plate, while I chose some of the small plates. Dinner brings a free bowl of misoshiru soup. It's almost identical to what Ta-Ke serves, perhaps a little less salty. Good, but nothing remarkable to either one.

Carlos also ordered the agedashi tofu, which was an interesting contrast to how both Ta-Ke and Kakui make it. The tofu was softer, which we approve of; and a serving of six cubes compared to the three that Kakui serves. The rice-flour batter was deep-fried but remained pure white. Carlos didn't mind this, but I preferred the tastier (and saltier) shredded bonita-batter that Kakui used. I also didn't like the dashi, finding it so weak as to be virtually tasteless. Grade: A-.

My selection of small plates included:
•	Sunomono (cucumber salad) with the option of octopus (tako). This was interesting – they had both pickled and salted the cucumbers. The octopus was slightly on the fishy side, but we liked it anyway. This was not baby octopus, so it had the tender but chewy texture that tako lovers like us approve of. I’d grade this a B+.
•	Mixed tempura basket. This is a surprisingly inexpensive appetizer ($7.95) that is the standard entree size of two shrimp and five vegetable pieces that most places serve at dinner for several dollars more. It should be noted, however, that even when the item count is the same at Shimizu, the size of what you receive is somewhat smaller than average. The batter frying was good, but I didn't care for the heavy crust of batter used to make everything look bigger than it was. As mentioned above with the agedashi tofu, the dashi dipping sauce was wimpy (good dashi is expensive, and cutting it with too much water is a way to save money). Grade: B.
•	Fried oysters (kaki). This was a modest plate of four small oysters with a fairly thick panko batter. Carlos liked this as the frying was done to a nice golden brown. I approved of the frying, but again, the thick crust was used to 'puff up' oysters that were half the size of Ta-Ke's more generous offering. Grade: B+.
•	Enoki beef. I liked this starter a lot, as it was a nice change from Ta-Ke's more limited appetizer menu. Thin slices of beef are wrapped tightly around a filling of enoki mushrooms, briefly sauteed and then cut in half for perfect one-bite pieces. The teriyaki sauce is housemade but almost gelatinous with cornstarch and again, a bit on the weak side. Grade: A-.

I ordered a bowl of rice, and the waitress brought it out almost immediately. This meant it was lukewarm by the time my tempura arrived. A sprinkle of black sesame seeds couldn't hide the heavy clumping of the rice on the bottom, showing that this bowl had been filled well in advance, something no Asian would approve of. 

Carlos' sashimi platter was a full 18-pieces, but the slices are noticeably smaller than Ta-Ke. They also weren't as fresh, but this being a Monday, it's not a fair test. There were three slices of what the waitress called “super-white tuna”, which I suspected wasn't tuna at all. This was because it was pure white, not just pale albacore, along with the slightly foamy texture of lower-quality frozen fish. Sure enough, a quick Googling once we were home turned up that this is probably escolar, one of those "good/bad" fishes (good tasting, but not necessarily good for you: http://blog.medellitin.com/2008/12/escolar-world-most-dangerous-fish.html). 

Inez chose not to come with us, so we brought her back a Mt. Fuji roll (deep-fried shrimp and crab, covered with scallop and avocado) and a bowl of miso soup, both of which she enjoyed. The rolls are slightly larger than Kakui serves, but noticeably smaller than what Ta-Ke gives.

There were some things we enjoyed about Shimizu, and it was a nice change from our usual. The cost-cutting is a bit annoying, but we'll plan on giving them a second try to see what the rest of the menu is like before we decide which one is better. Right now, Ta-Ke has a slight edge over Shimizu, with both having minor but consistent flaws.

Three people, dinner (one was take-out): five starters, one soup (take-out charges for soup), one bowl of rice (starters don't come with rice, and I wanted some for my tempura), two entrees, with tip was $92.