Soto
Contact Info:
Address: 357 Sixth Ave (nr Washington Pl)
City: New York, NY
Zip: 10014
map: View the Map
Phone: (212) 414-3088
Food Info:
Cuisine:
Japanese
2nd Cuisine:
Sushi
Payment:
Amex Visa Mastercard
Cititour Review:
My phone was ringing. It was Stacey, and she was lost. “I’m on 6th Avenue, near West 4th, and I don’t see the restaurant,” she said. “Where is it?” “It’s there,” I said. “You must be standing right in front of it. But I’ll be there in a minute and we’ll find it together.” I hopped out of the cab and found Stacey standing two doors down from Soto, a signless, inconspicuous temple of sushi. “Here it is,” I said, pointing to the naked storefront behind her. She turned around and all of a sudden realized it had been right in front of her. “I can’t believe I was standing right next to it, I barely noticed it.” On a noisy, steamy, overdeveloped block of 6th Avenue, flanked by a WA-MA bank and Gray’s Papaya, Soto almost vanishes into the line of storefronts. But once you stop and look, you’ll see it emerge.
Its façade is a sheet of glass that’s backed by a cream-colored wall cut out with asymmetrical shapes that reveal a simple dining room and sushi bar. A hostess with a sharp black bob may be standing with her face centered in one of those shapes. She’s one of a team of beautiful Japanese women who will attend to you, quietly filling sake glasses, and shepherding plates of glossy, practically quivering fish to a row of closely spaced tables. You’ll walk inside and be seated at one of those tables. And then you will begin a journey of—to quote Will Ferrell being James Lipton—scrumptulescent sushi feasting. Indeed, despite the trouble you may have locating this place, I’d recommend you keep a keen eye out and immediately arrange for you, and anyone else who claims to love the Japanese way, to plant your bottoms in one of those seats at one of those tables, or even at the tall chairs at the sushi bar. You could sit Indian-style on the floor for all I care, just go. It’s an exquisite experience.
The chef of this accidental sushi hideaway is a fellow by the name of Sotohiro Kosugi. He is a small and thin man with a thick head of dark hair tucked under a soft white cap. While I wouldn’t throw him in a boxing ring against Rocky Balboa, he exudes a certain amount of physical strength from behind his sushi stage. You get the feeling he’d have no problem dropping and giving you a hundred push-ups after filleting a tuna in under a minute with one hand tied behind his back the entire time (pushups included). Next time, I’m sitting at the sushi bar and putting myself in his hands for the night. Kosugi is a third generation sushi chef who was a Food & Wine Best New Chef in 1997 and was the chef and owner of a spot in Atlanta of the same name. He shuttered his Atlanta restaurant last year and took his show up to the Big Top, New York City. Thank you Mr. Kosugi, from the bottom of my heart.
Stacey and I took a seat at one of the tables facing the sushi bar and looked at the menu, a simple bifold of flimsy copy paper printed daily with the chef’s menu. (The menu includes a page from the sushi bar, a selection from the kitchen and then a back page of sushi nigiri and omakase ($48/$58). Plates are priced in the $10-$28 range, all were large enough to share.) As Stacey looked over the sake list, I took in the room. It’s brightly lit with pinpoint lighting and there’s not much to distract you from your food. Designer Hiro Tsuruta (Chickalicious & Momofuku Noodle Bar) built a space as spare as they come, with floors, tables and chairs cut from glossy wood the color of creamery butter. Walls are stark white and one is hung cut with a large red rising sun in relief, which tends to make the wall look like a large Japanese Flag. But you won’t spend much time looking at the décor. Your gaze will go straight down, towards your plate.
Even something as simple and mundane as edamame—a gift from the chef—were exquisite. A half dozen cool pods are nestled one on top of the other in strict order, each one filled with fat sweet tender beans, seasoned with the complex flavor of the deep sea, not just a dose of salt. We started with the chu toro tartare ($24), a disc of finely diced lusciously fatty and tuna capped with a thin layer of avocado coulis, garnished with just a teaspoon of caviar and a delicate flurry of minced chives. The disc was served in the center of a pool of sesame ponzu, a fresh bright soy citrus sauce that cut the fat of the tuna and gave the dish the right amount of sharpness. Once I had a bite of the second course, a half dozen slices of pristine Atlantic salmon sashimi cured briefly in citrus and topped with a fluff of cilantro and scallion ($16), I decided it was the greatest sushi bar creation I’d ever had. Stacey and I were literally closing our eyes and moaning at this point, smiling at Mr. Kosugi after each bite. Poor man probably thought we were being obscene. We were just very happy customers.
The salmon citrus was my favorite dish; that was until I got to the next and the next. I was getting tired of listening to myself say, “Oh my god, this is so good. It’s amazing. It’s so good!” I mean couldn’t I get a bit more creative? I was really a broken record. The live Long Island fluke usuzukuri ($22) also left me in some transcendental state. The fish is not live, but according to our waitress, was quite recently living. (I’m sorry, fluke.) Kosugi slices the fish into translucent diamonds fanned out on the plate like a flower with each petal topped with a dot of yuzu zest, some sea salt and lime juice. The flavors are clean and precise and the dish is beautiful enough to warrant gallery space at the MOMA. We were both cursing that we hadn’t brought a camera to capture the images for later. I’d frame it and put it on my desk next to pictures of loved ones.
But there’s nothing that could prepare me for the likes of the minute-steamed tai ($16), a dish from the kitchen that must be experienced, preferably tonight if you can do so. It’s a quick steam of Japanese sea bream that’s barely cooked, topped with julienned young ginger drenched in ginger scallion oil. The texture of the fish is somewhere around that of sushi, but not quite. It’s slightly creamier and the ginger scallion oil and young ginger give the fish a really deep expression of flavor. It’s like fish that’s been through therapy. It’s very complex.
Scallop and fluke shiso agedashi ($12) is a fun little play on fried fish. There are two of each fish and they are individually wrapped in batter and deep fried into little shiso wrapped packages, served in a bowl of dashi broth that’s sweet, sour and salty all at once.
In case you were wondering, Soto also serves straight up sushi—long fin squid from Japan, trigger fish from Florida, seared red snapper from New Zealand ($5), Japanese Mackerel ($6), toro from Spain ($12), chu toro from Ecuador ($6), fresh water ($5) and sea eel ($6) and more. Rolls are simple one-ingredient creations, other than the one daily special, which Stacey and I shared for our last course—a spicy tuna roll diced up with Asian pear, cucumber, avocado, sesame and pine nuts with scallions, wrapped in thin, clingy layer of gauzy white kelp ($16). It was a snug and compact roll that offered great flavor and contrasting texture, and as a bonus could be eaten with ease in one bite. (It was not one of those gargantuan Godzilla-sized rolls that you can never seem to fit in your mouth in one bite so they end up a mess on your lap.)
I suppose Soto serves dessert but we weren’t interested in anything sweet. I wanted to let the savory tastes of the meal linger. Instead, we ordered another bottle of sake (a smaller one) and hung out for a while longer. As we finally readied to leave, a couple walked in, looking bewildered and very relieved. As I walked passed them at the sushi bar, I heard her say, “I can’t believe we walked right by this place.” I guess it’s true what they say. Sometimes you’ve gotta look hard to see what’s right in front of you.
Review By: Andrea Strong
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