Alpha Fusion - NYC

So it's been a while since our last post, keeping up with a blog is a lot harder than we thought it would be! Today's errands took me to the Penn Station area and lunch was at Alpha Fusion. I had heard that their Chelsea location was really good and they had really unique and inventive sushi rolls - like the kind from California that I always miss. Then Alpha Fusion came out with a Living Social coupon offer - $25 for a $50 gift certificate, which I quickly grabbed up. The 34th Street location is in kind of a random location between 8th and 9th - it's actually next to a small parking lot, and the inside wasn't too great either. Actually the inside was fine by itself, it had a modern decor, but they opened the restaurant to the outside that day so I couldn't really get past the random location. I don't know how to explain it...it seemed a little strip mall-ish to me. I guess it would be an okay place if you are already in the area but based on the atmosphere and out-of-reach location alone, I don't know if I would come back here.

The food didn't make up for the location either. First off, we got the "Spicy Tuna on Pringles with Black Tobiko." Yes...that's raw tuna on a Pringle. I really liked the novelty factor, and their spicy tuna is pretty good, but I don't think it was particularly enhanced by the potato chip at all. I actually didn't really notice it.

For sushi rolls, we got: the Volcano (chicken tempura roll topped with spicy tuna and chili pepper), Red Hot Dragon (shrimp tempura roll topped with spicy tuna and crunchy), and the Spicy Alpha (crunchy spicy salmon roll topped with tuna, salmon, and avocado) - each around $14. None of these rolls really stood out to me - I don't think their sushi rice was made that well. It seemed like regular white rice to me and didn't hold together well on some of the rolls (there was also just too much rice in my opinion). My favorite of the three would be the Red Hot Dragon, if I had to choose. They give a fair amount of spicy tuna on top of the Red Hot Dragon - the spicy tuna was probably my favorite part. As for the Volcano roll, it was my first time having chicken in a sushi roll...and I just don't think it's meant to be. If it was just chicken and rice - sure. But adding spicy tuna to fried chicken didn't do it for me.

The service at the restaurant was really nice though. They were attentive and I think the bartender was trying out different drink recipes at the time - the manager came around with free shots for us to try. However, my dining partner was dreadfully hungover from the night before, so we politely declined.

Alpha Fusion was definitely a good value with our gift certificate, but it probably won't be a repeat for me. The Chelsea location might be better? I also didn't think these rolls compared to the sushi I had in California!

Koi - NYC

This past week, I went to a business lunch at Koi, by Bryant Park in midtown. Koi is a branch of a sushi restaurant that started in Los Angeles. I have been to both of these restaurants before and I definitely think the Los Angeles restaurant is better. Maybe it's because NYC has so many high-end sushi restaurants or maybe it's the location in the middle of all the midtown office buildings, but Koi definitely seems like an overlooked restaurant. However, I still like this restaurant because it has a large variety of sushi rolls - including those crazy rolls with baked seafood and crazy combinations, that you really only see in California (in particular, I'm thinking of Tomodachi by the UCLA campus in Westwood...soooo good, and the rolls are gigantic). So anyway, I'm glad there is a place where we can find these types of rolls in NYC - even though they are crazily overpriced.

One of the best things at Koi is their Crispy Rice with spicy tuna. Spicy tuna is just one of my favorite foods ever (I sometimes make spicy tuna at home and just eat an entire bowl of spicy tuna in one sitting!) - and this is definitely something unique that you will not find at other sushi restaurants. I love the crisp I get when I bite into this - I love different textures in food, and you definitely get that here.

Although, like I said, it is kind of crazy expensive - $16 for these 4 pieces you see!

One of the other dishes I love at Koi is their Creamy Rock Shrimp Tempura ($18). I really like the coating on the shrimp tempura at Koi - it has a little heat to it - and I love piling the shrimp onto a piece of the endive and eating it together that way. I think this is much better than the rock shrimp tempura at Morimoto in NY.

We also had the dragon roll which was reallyy good as well - although I don't know if I would say any sushi roll is worth a $22 price tag? I would recommend Koi as a good place to go to for just a light bite and drinks - but the appetizer portions are still about $15-20 so ... it just depends on your budget! If it's a nice day out, I would really just recommend buying food somewhere and eating it in Bryant Park - one of my favorite parks in the city!

Another thing I should note is that Koi is extremely noisy. I thought maybe it was just noisy at night when I was here for dinner the first time, but I don't understand why it was so noisy during a weekday lunch in the middle of all the midtown office buildings? And I wasn't even sitting in the main dining area, but rather at the sushi bar!

If I ever go to Koi again, it would just be to get the crispy rice with spicy tuna and to try the Chef Sampler Plate for dessert - it was $44. I was very intrigued by this on the dessert menu just because I have never seen a $44 dessert before. On their website, it says it "includes all desserts," but ... who orders that?