Fuji San Delivers the "Yum"

A good number of items on the Fuji San menu have "yum" in the name, and that couldn't be more appropriate. The cozy, eight-table BYOB restaurant at 10015 York Road offers both authentic Thai and Japanese cuisine.

The traditional Thai entrees include dishes such as sesame pineapple ($10.95) and pad gra-praw ($10.95), stir-fried basil, which come with a choice of a protein. Fuji San also offers vegetarian dishes, noodles, fried rice and five Thai curry dishes. 

But to be honest, I can offer nothing specific about those dishes because I can't go into a restaurant that makes sushi and not order copious amounts of maki rolls.

My dining buddy and I started with the Thai salad ($4.95) and miso soup for appetizers. The salad, a mix of cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions and lettuce was simple but irresistible under a drizzle of peanut sauce. The miso soup was also delectable with just the right amount of tofu, seaweed and scallions and not overwhelmingly salty like many miso soups tend to be.

But the sushi was the main event, and we went all out, ordering the shitake mushroom roll ($4.95), the eel and avocado roll ($6.95), the spicy tuna roll ($5.95), the Chesapeake roll ($8.95), the sunrise roll ($9.95), the California (D) roll ($6.75), and the volcano roll ($12.95).

The shitake roll and eel and avocado rolls were what you'd expect from any decent sushi restaurant. The sushi chef was generous with the mushrooms in the shitake roll, and the fresh avocado and sweet eel sauce complemented the grilled eel well.

The spicy tuna roll, a regular in nearly all sushi restaurants, was above average. I credit this to the scallions the rice was rolled in, giving the spicy tuna an edge with the muted onion flavor.

Made of lump crap meat, shrimp tempura, cucumber and fish roe, the Chesapeake roll was a delicious Maryland-style seafood roll, and the sunrise roll was a light and refreshing mix of eel, shrimp, cucumber, avocado, egg and roe in eel sauce.

Unlike most sushi restaurants, Fuji San offers four variations of the classic California roll. The first option is the typical avocado, cucumber and imitation crabmeat mix, and the second option throws in roe. But, native Marylander that I am, I was most delighted by the third and fourth options which substitute the crab stick with real lump crabmeat.

The most impressive roll on the platter, however, was the volcano roll. Billed as a dynamite roll with thousand island toppings, the volcano roll comes in five large pieces with tuna and salmon mixed with a spicy sauce and the spicy, creamy "thousand island" sauce on top. Despite its appealing description and appearance on the plate, it was the least satisfying to my taste buds, perhaps because the fish inside is cooked and I prefer sushi raw.

But overall, the meal was delicious and among the best selection of sushi rolls I've seen. If the Thai dishes rival the sushi rolls, Fuji San is a Cockeysville can't-miss.