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😒 3/5 - Not Impressed
By 👻 @Matthew G, 01/25/2021 3:00 am
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On a recent trip to Aspen, I made sure to make a dinner reservation at Matsuhisa after reading many positive things about the restaurant. However, after having dinner there, I’m confused, still trying to figure out what the hype is about. Although the service was very good, my wife and I both found the food to be pretty mediocre and the restaurant itself to be dated.
We visited when indoor dining was still open in Aspen in mid-January, and I made sure to call the restaurant exactly a month in advance when reservations opened so that we could get the date and time we wanted. It’s annoying that Matsuhisa wasn’t taking reservations online at the time, but we were able to get a table for close to the time we wanted by calling, so it worked out.
When I made the reservation, they didn’t specify which part of the restaurant we’d be in, upstairs or downstairs, but I was correct in assuming we’d be in the main dining room, which is downstairs. I was surprised that by “downstairs” they mean an underground basement dining room, which I found to be a bit dark and depressing. I thought upstairs versus downstairs was referring to ground level versus second floor, when in fact, “upstairs” is actually the ground level. The entrance to the restaurant is also odd, since you enter through a non-descript door off of a side street, rather than entering from the front of the building as would seem normal.
Once we had checked in with two separate hostess stands, one at street level and one in the downstairs dining room, which seemed poorly coordinated (the second one had no idea we were coming down, so it’s not like the two seem to have any communication), I was surprised to find that the restaurant is very dated on the inside. This was our first time at any of Nobu’s restaurants, and I figured any restaurant by the celebrity chef would be really sleek and modern. However, this one looks like it’s straight out of the 90s, with everything done in blue and peach with really light wood, and not in particularly great condition either. This restaurant looks shabby and has clearly been screaming out for a renovation for years.
Even though the restaurant was at 25% capacity when we were there, it definitely still had a loud, bustling feel to it. Noise carries easily between tables and from the open kitchen that the tables overlook. Our server came over quickly once we were seated, and he was very nice, going over the specials and his recommendations from the menu since we had never been there. The service we received from him, as well as from the very nice assistant server, was strong throughout the meal. One of the two servers was always readily available and they stopped by at appropriate intervals during the meal.
The food, however, was not as good as the service. It was really a mixed bag, with some dishes being very good, and others totally missing the mark. From the cold dishes, we started with the big eye tuna sashimi with jalapeno (a special instead of the usual yellowtail with jalapeno on the menu), and the Nobu crispy rice with tuna. The sashimi was excellent, as the sauce and jalapeno really worked perfectly with the fish. However, I thought the crispy rice with tuna was a huge disappointment. I didn’t know it was going to be a deconstructed appetizer where we’d have to put together each of the pieces ourselves, which doesn’t appeal to me. Even beyond that, I really don’t like tuna crispy rice unless there are actual full pieces of tuna on the rice. The paste that they used here didn’t even contain any noticeable chunks of tuna, so it was basically just a tuna-flavored paste. I thought this was a poor-quality choice for this dish and would not get it again.
From the hot dishes, we tried the tempura rock shrimp with a creamy sauce, and this was very tasty. Even though the pieces of shrimp were a bit on the small side, it was still tasty, and the creamy sauce was good.
We then had a few pieces of sushi and a couple basic sushi rolls (spicy tuna, shrimp tempura), and these were just ok. I didn’t think the fish for the pieces of sushi was particularly great, more just unremarkable, and the sushi rolls were not the best. The spicy tuna roll contained the same ground tuna paste as the crispy rice, which we didn’t like at all, and the shrimp tempura roll was ok, but poorly rolled and pretty bland.
We finished the meal by sharing the Nobu shaved ice, which was huge even for two people to split, but it was actually very good with a variety of flavored syrups to add, along with sweetened condensed milk to pour over it as well. We liked this dessert.
We didn’t order much to drink, but I did have the gardener cocktail and thought it was mediocre. It was kind of like a cross between a green juice and a margarita, but was too sweet and not particularly great. It did not taste like a particularly high-end cocktail, and the fact that I hadn’t even finished one drink by the time we had dessert was a good indication that I didn’t like it.
Overall, our meal at Matsuhisa was very disappointing. Although some items were good (the sashimi jalapeno, rock shrimp tempura, and shaved ice dessert), other items were so disappointing or mediocre that the whole meal fell flat. In addition, the restaurant itself was really dated and unimpressive. Even though we had great service to help balance out some of the negative aspects of the experience, I still wouldn’t want to come back.
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