IS BIGGER ALWAYS BETTER?
Morimoto: A Supersized Sushi Spot
by John Mariani

The Dining Room at Morimoto

Bigger is rarely better when it comes to restaurants, unless you're opening up a feedhall, an Alsatian brasserie or a rathskeller, where the food need only be of a certain standard, and the buoyant atmosphere is a great part of the fun of being there. But when it comes to the exacting precision needed to raise Japanese food above fast food, smaller is always better. To whit, the best sushi restaurants in the world are all rather small, including the tiny Masa in New York, where chef Masa Takayama prepares food for a counter of twelve people and a few small tables. So, too, Sushi of Gari has only eleven stools and 40 seats.

But there has been a trend to bigger and snazzier Japanese restaurants in NYC, including Ono, Nobu 27, Matsuri and the original Megu (the newer Megu Midtown is of medium size and does quite well on all counts). Last year a branch of the original Morimoto from Philadelphia was opened in NYC's Meatpacking District (also home to the gargantuan Buddakan, Ono, Craftsteak and Del Posto) by restaurateur Stephen Starr, and it's a beauty, with wafting gauzy drapes, sleek use of multi-tiered dining areas, a communal dining table and sushi bar and burnished metal and wood surfaces. The Morimoto in question is Masaharu Morimoto, whose fame as one of the American Iron Chefs on TV has garnered him as much attention and business as his colleagues on the show, Bobby Flay and Mario Batali (both of whom, incidentally, have opened gargantuan restaurants in the past year).

Remarkably, despite his TV schedule, personal appearances and restaurants in Philadelphia and Mumbai, Morimoto keeps as much as possible to the NYC namesake restaurant, usually at the sushi bar but appearing around the room asking how everything is going. He's a big, powerful-looking pony-tailed guy in Japanese attire, a cross between a lightweight Sumo wrestler and a middleweight Mario Batali, and I'm sure many of his guests go ga-ga when he roams the room.

The service staff all speak good English, though the hostess desk seems to have odd ideas about seating. Our party of four had made a weekday reservation a month in advance, yet upon arrival, we were given the single worst table in the restaurant, tucked away in a corner flanking the hostess desk. We cordially asked for a different table and were offered one right by the entrance, complete with frigid breezes blowing through. When we pointed to any of several unoccupied tables in various sections of the main dining room, we were told 1) that one is being set for five, b) that one is set for an 8:15 p.m. table and c) those two-tops cannot be put together to make a four-top. We finally settled for a table in a side room so overheated, we started removing items of clothing.

Chef Masaharu Morimoto

As in NYC, the original Morimoto in Philadelphia is as much a scene as it is a restaurant, and I found much of the food less than wonderful, built more on wacky concepts like dropping a red hot stone into broth to cook lobster at your table. The fact that the lights changed color all night didn't do anything to help the food. The NYC place is just as loud, with pounding music, of course, so conversation is nearly impossible, which seems not to bother most of the raucous, shouting clientele at all. The bare tables were not wiped down by servers or busboys but merely re-set for the next party as soon as the first left. The chopsticks are plastic, the wine glasses of decent quality and the wine list better than expected in a Japanese restaurant; sakes are offered in profusion.

We ordered from just about every category on the menu, and overall the food was pleasant, imaginative, but lacking in intensity of flavors. Clearly the kitchen churns this food out at a headlong pace, and the number of orders it must handle makes finesse a dead issue. One of the odder items was "Morimoto Sushi," described as "seared toro, salmon, eel, hamachi and five spices," which sounds like an array; instead it is like a napoleon in which all the ingredients are layered and the salmon overpowers all the other fish flavors. At $28 it is a downer. Something called "beef curry bread" with a panko crust was a nice crispy little tidbit but not worth $11. The tempura of crispy rock shrimp with wasabi aïoli was all right but the crust—the whole point of good tempura—was mushy, and lobster fritters with pickled ginger, scallion and a lobster reduction tasted only of batter and oil, not lobster. Soft shell crab roll, also deep fried, was, on the other hand, very good and very crisp.

We moved on to main courses that ranged from O.K.—braised black cod with Japanese ratatouille and ginger soy emulsion, and a halibut with bland black bean sauce, shaved ginger, and hot oil that was not particularly hot—to the downright silly: something called ishi yaki buri bop (which reminds me of the old song "Down in Nagasaki where the boys all chew tobackee and the girls are really wicky-wacky-woo!") which turns out to be yellowtail on rice cooked at your table in a hot stone bowl. The clumps of fish are then mixed, ignobly, together into a near mush. Peking salmon also suffered from having a fishy salmon taste, and Madeira and tomato seemed oddly out of place.

Desserts like tofu cheesecake didn't entice anyone at our table, but a chocolate-pecan brownie was pretty good, topped with amaretto cream, espresso ice cream and cardamon sauce. A coconut macaroon was flavorless in the face of a cloying banana mousse, passion fruit sauce and rum raisin ice cream.

Morimoto is a swinging hot spot, for sure, but it delivers more sizzle than good taste, and I suspect that if it were 25 percent smaller it would be 50 percent better.

John Mariani is well known for his frank and poignant writing in Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection. He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink and co-author, with his wife, of the Italian-American Cookbook.