Restaurant Review: Sushi Spot

If there’s one foreign dish us Americans love, it’s sushi.  From grocery stores to fancy restaurants and seemingly everywhere in between, sushi has become a big name player in the American food game.  Of course, with such popularity comes different interpretations. Some heavenly and some, well, not so much.   

Luckily, the in Largo knows how to please when it comes to making great sushi.  Nestled in the Publix strip mall on Bay Street, the Sushi Spot serves up a variety of Asian inspired dishes including stir fry, tempura (battered deep fried seafood), noodles and of course, a ton of different sushi.                                    

Upon first glance, the sushi menu is pretty overwhelming. Rolls upon rolls of different varieties and preparations of sushi from tuna and grouper to eel and octopus, some cooked, some raw, and all beautifully crafted and made to order.    

To see what the Sushi Spot is all about in one dish, the sushi combination platters are a great choice.  Most of them, like sushi/sashimi combo for two get you about 15 to 20 pieces of sushi as well as a soup and salad to start off the meal.                      

I opted for the Sushi Nami combo with a cucumber roll of eight pieces and the chefs pick of eight different pieces of sushi.  This was an enlightening experience to say the least.                                                                    

After a modest cup of miso soup and a bowl of fresh salad with a delicious, aromatic ginger dressing, the Sushi Nami appeared.  Admittedly, in a stupor of sushi ignorance, I thought the chef's pick of eight different sushi pieces would come in the form of rolls wrapped in rice with assorted fish and other ingredients in the middle.  What I got was eight hulking pieces of different raw seafood, each atop a bit of rice.  “Live and learn,” I thought to myself as a big piece of raw octopus tentacle, eel, salmon, whitefish and tuna stared up at me.       

And that’s what dining should be about any way- new experiences, sampling the edible culture of some radically different region across the planet.  And, with that in mind, I dove in.                                                         

I won’t pander and say each piece was a taste bud delight. Octopus is a bit rubbery and the texture of tentacles is something not easily forgettable.  The eel was somewhat fishy which may be a testament to the freshness of that piece or just raw eel in general.  The marbled tuna was nearly blood red and absolutely, melt in your mouth delicious, and the other pieces – salmon, krab, halibut – were neither outstanding nor terrible dunked in a bit of soy sauce with some slivers of ginger.                                                             

This was, by far, an interesting culinary experience.  All the dishes were presented beautifully, the service was great and the sushi, regardless of my own personal leanings, was the work of people who seem to treat their food like works of art.  If you fancy yourself a sushi lover, the Sushi Spot in Largo will definitely treat you right.