Sato Sushi - San Jose

My coworkers and I go here so often that the sushi chefs know all of our names and even the owners recognize us here. They know when someone is missing from the group. They know what our favorite dishes are and how we like them prepared (because we have ordered nearly the same things every single time we’ve been here in the past 5 years). Sato is my sushi bar equivalent of Cheers. But we don’t come here merely because it’s the “local sushi bar” — the food is GOOD. Very rarely in a sushi restaurant do I find a place where the fish is great AND the rolls are great. Usually if the fish is great, the rolls are pretty typical… and usually if the rolls are fancy, the fish is just ok. At Sato, you get both. They also have a very extensive menu with a variety of bento boxes and Korean dishes (the chefs are Korean… I believe the owners are as well), so there’s really something for everybody. Let’s start with the fish. We nearly always order a hamachi and salmon sashimi appetizer, and we’ll sometimes also get albacore. The salmon is usually fantastic. The hamachi has moments of greatness, but sometimes can just be ok. The albacore is good, but ask for it with a little tataki sauce and it’s way better. Now the rolls. Sato makes the BEST spicy scallop handrolls I’ve ever had. They stuff it with sooo much scallop, and they drizzle the mixture with roe, daikon sprouts, sesame seeds, and a sweet sauce. Ask for it “not so spicy”, b/c their regular mixture is pretty darn spicy. The sweet sauce helps tone it down a little. The Harley Davidson roll is another winner. It’s filled with a crab and spicy tuna mixture, and cucumber, and then they pile even more of the crab and spicy tuna mixture on top, plus the same sweet sauce they use on the spicy scallop rolls, so the roll ends up standing about 3 high. This is a beautiful and delicious roll. The other standout dish at Sato is the Korean Chirashi. The Korean chirashi consists of 4 types of fish (tuna, salmon, albacore, and snapper, i believe) chopped into little squares, roe, and slices of jalapenos and garlic (which i usually take out), atop a bed of lettuce and rice. It comes with a small bowl of Korean chili bean sauce – which is sweeter than it is spicy, so you can use a lot and not have it be too spicy. The entire thing is FABULOUS – it’s such a refreshing, healthy (i think) dish. Plus, they give you a ton of fish, and when you mix it all together, it’s never too much rice – you always get much more of the fish and lettuce flavor than rice, but the rice is good because it also helps fill you up. The bowl is HUGE – definitely too much for one person to eat alone. Since we love the sushi at Sato, we’ll typically split this among 4-6 people so we still have room in our stomachs for sushi. My one tip for eating at this restaurant is this – sit at the sushi bar, and make sure when you talk to the sushi chefs (try to sit by Hiro, the head chef who is always wearing the cowboy hat… he will usually be at the side of the bar closer to the door), you sound like you know your stuff. I’ve noticed that I always get great fish when I sit at the bar, but I’ve ordered to go over the phone and gotten really BAD fish, so I think they do discriminate and give their less fresh stuff to people they think can’t tell the difference.