Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Shino Sushi + Kappo is a true sleeper
Fine dining hidden in Little Italy without glitz or glamor
Special combo, much finer than its name suggests
Rumors of Shino Sushi + Kappo have percolated up through the usual channels. People say that chef Robert Nakamura —brother of Hane Sushi’s Roger Nakamura — produces elegant and indulgent sushi, having learned a trick or two working at Sushi Ota. And much like Ota, Shino is a true sleeper, without a proper website or any of the glitz and glamor that often accompanies fine restaurants. After dark, it’s easy to pass Shino by on its desolate block in Little Italy, with only train tracks and high rises for company.
Inside, the spartan concrete furnishings reveal little, but diners gush as they make their way to the exit.
“Oh my god, that was the best sushi!”
Et cetera.
The rumors proof. Shino is exceptional. Even a plate of seaweed salad tells the whole truth. Instead of the dyed-green strings of jellied kombu sold everywhere else, Shino's salad is this little, perfect composition of rainbow seaweeds. Each piece distinct, briny, and dressed lightly with fine rice vinegar and some goma (sesame seeds), served in the thickly glazed ceramics for which the restaurant is named.
A perfect seaweed salad
Plates of sushi present gorgeous jewels of fish and rice. Asking for the $32 “sushi combo special” sounds crass, as if it were copied form the menu at Sushi Deli, but the platter includes marbled chu-toro, uni, spear squid that dissolves into a rush of briny freshness, buttery yellowtail, and chopped toro rolls, to name a few.
Special combo, much finer than its name suggests
But go beyond the special combo, and there is Japanese amberjack, almost impossibly tender and succulent.
Raw octopus, simply refreshing.
Zuke (marinated) tuna, which looks like a polished gemstone and finishes with the perfect zing of yuzokoshō chili paste.
There is o-toro, richer than the best lardo and laced with the taste of the salty blue water where the tuna hunt.
Of course, sushi is rice, and Shino’s rice exceeds expectations. Without too much sugar or vinegar, it’s an exercise in pointed understatement. Where some chefs play with rice to give it character, Nakamura’s kitchen makes rice that acts like a gessoed canvas for the masterstroke of exceptional fish. Teased into form by the chefs’ experienced hands, each bite seems tightly compacted and solid until it crumbles into perfect grains.
A smaller version of Shino's omakase meal
Shino lacks real flaws. Imperfections are slight enough that their mention constitutes little more than quibbling. Putting soy sauce, and even extra wasabi, on the table invites diners to question the chef’s judgment, which proves 99% impeccable. Nakamura might go a hair too heavy on the wasabi, but only in very rare instances and in a manner that comes down to personal taste. It’s only worth mentioning because the fact that noticing such a small thing, really the merest shadow of doubt, somehow highlights excellence.
It calls to mind a minor character from a William Gibson novel, an old man who lives in a cardboard box at a Tokyo subway station. He paints Gunndam model robot figures with fervent obsession, “perhaps leaving each one with a single minute and somehow perfect flaw, at once his signature and a recognition of the nature of the universe. How nothing is perfect, really. Nothing ever finished. Everything is process.”
And the process of dining at Shino approaches the sublime.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Shino Sushi + Kappo is a true sleeper
Fine dining hidden in Little Italy without glitz or glamor
Shino Sushi + Kappo is a true sleeper
Fine dining hidden in Little Italy without glitz or glamor
Special combo, much finer than its name suggests
Rumors of Shino Sushi + Kappo have percolated up through the usual channels. People say that chef Robert Nakamura —brother of Hane Sushi’s Roger Nakamura — produces elegant and indulgent sushi, having learned a trick or two working at Sushi Ota. And much like Ota, Shino is a true sleeper, without a proper website or any of the glitz and glamor that often accompanies fine restaurants. After dark, it’s easy to pass Shino by on its desolate block in Little Italy, with only train tracks and high rises for company.
Inside, the spartan concrete furnishings reveal little, but diners gush as they make their way to the exit.
“Oh my god, that was the best sushi!”
Et cetera.
The rumors proof. Shino is exceptional. Even a plate of seaweed salad tells the whole truth. Instead of the dyed-green strings of jellied kombu sold everywhere else, Shino's salad is this little, perfect composition of rainbow seaweeds. Each piece distinct, briny, and dressed lightly with fine rice vinegar and some goma (sesame seeds), served in the thickly glazed ceramics for which the restaurant is named.
A perfect seaweed salad
Plates of sushi present gorgeous jewels of fish and rice. Asking for the $32 “sushi combo special” sounds crass, as if it were copied form the menu at Sushi Deli, but the platter includes marbled chu-toro, uni, spear squid that dissolves into a rush of briny freshness, buttery yellowtail, and chopped toro rolls, to name a few.
Special combo, much finer than its name suggests
But go beyond the special combo, and there is Japanese amberjack, almost impossibly tender and succulent.
Raw octopus, simply refreshing.
Zuke (marinated) tuna, which looks like a polished gemstone and finishes with the perfect zing of yuzokoshō chili paste.
There is o-toro, richer than the best lardo and laced with the taste of the salty blue water where the tuna hunt.
Of course, sushi is rice, and Shino’s rice exceeds expectations. Without too much sugar or vinegar, it’s an exercise in pointed understatement. Where some chefs play with rice to give it character, Nakamura’s kitchen makes rice that acts like a gessoed canvas for the masterstroke of exceptional fish. Teased into form by the chefs’ experienced hands, each bite seems tightly compacted and solid until it crumbles into perfect grains.
A smaller version of Shino's omakase meal
Shino lacks real flaws. Imperfections are slight enough that their mention constitutes little more than quibbling. Putting soy sauce, and even extra wasabi, on the table invites diners to question the chef’s judgment, which proves 99% impeccable. Nakamura might go a hair too heavy on the wasabi, but only in very rare instances and in a manner that comes down to personal taste. It’s only worth mentioning because the fact that noticing such a small thing, really the merest shadow of doubt, somehow highlights excellence.
It calls to mind a minor character from a William Gibson novel, an old man who lives in a cardboard box at a Tokyo subway station. He paints Gunndam model robot figures with fervent obsession, “perhaps leaving each one with a single minute and somehow perfect flaw, at once his signature and a recognition of the nature of the universe. How nothing is perfect, really. Nothing ever finished. Everything is process.”
And the process of dining at Shino approaches the sublime.
Comments