Crystal Fish Sushi

Monterey, CA

It's hard to trust Yelp reviews on freshness of sushi since people's opinion on the matter varies so much. Since we're self proclaimed sushi snobs, but have no right to be, this makes a gamble on a sushi restaurant that much more difficult. We could have gone to a pretty safe Californian cuisine place for dinner, but I was really craving sushi. So we figured, we'd drive by the place and see if it was legit. Sometimes when you look at the menu and walk by, you can just tell. Well, it's hard to fault a place that's nearly half full when they open at 5. By 6, every table was filled with a couple parties waiting. So at least we knew it was popular. But what I was really looking for was their specials menu. I get bored of the same salmon/yellowtail/tuna generic items that people eat, making them

Kirin and hot tea

"real" sushi eaters.  Their specials board looked promising for the evening, ocean trout, baby sardine, live Monterey shrimp, and escolar. I guess the thing throwing me off was that everybody's Yelp review mentioned how great their rolls were. A quality sushi place where their rolls are the highlight? Weird. Anyways, we attempted to rummage through the menu, but it was just too big. So like most of our sushi endeavors, we went with the sushi dinner (omakase) that included 12 pieces of nigiri and their special roll for the evening, tontoru roll. We also ordered hot green tea and a Kirin. Good miso soup always seems to start our meal off the right foot and it was no different here. The hot, rich miso was a good indication of things to come. 

12 piece sushi nigiri dinner

One of the first things that delighted me as our sushi dinner arrived was that there was no ebi, ikura or tamego, which are all fine items, but seem like a waste, when you only have 10-12 pieces. The other thing that I was happy about was that many of the specials were on the plate. From back row, left to right, was unagi, uni, crab, ocean trout, tai and blue fin tuna.The front row had albacor, hotate, escolar, sake, hamachi, and big eye tuna. Without going through each one, the highlights were the escolar, trout and surprisingly the unagi. The escolar was smooth and sweet and starting to become one of my favorites. The unagi is usually boring, but this one was really flavor full and memorable. The scallop (fishy) and tai (poorly cut) were the lowlights, but for the most part, all the items were fresh, solid offerings. 

Special Roll

I don't specifically recall what was in this roll, although I'm pretty sure it had soft shell crab in the interior. The whole evening, I faced one specific sushi chef who only made rolls, but he never rushed and put all his effort into precision slicing of everything he did. That, combined with the really great mixture of items made this roll really good. It wasn't over sauced or masked by one overpowering item, it just flowed really well and pleasantly surprised me.

Round 2

My second round of nigiri consisted of all specials, from top to bottom, Chu-Toro, baby tako,  escolar, live Monterey shrimp, and baby sardines. I've tried various types of sardines and decided to give them one more try, but can never find any that I like. Unfortunately, these were no different, tasting slightly bitter. I just have to accept that I don't jive with sardines. The baby tako, although chewy was notably fresh, as were the ami-ebi, which were good. The Chu-Toro, although tender, was not cut correctly, because both pieces had a little cartilage that detracted from its smoothness. 

Shrimp heads

Probably the best part of ordering ami-ebi is getting the deep fried heads, which were really amazing. You can tell the freshness of the shrimp because when you bite into this, its supposed to be really sweet, which it was in this case, a perfect ending.

I'm happy to have learned that the reviews behind this place are correct, Crystal Fish offers fresh fish, good rolls, a friendly staff and fair prices in Monterey. I wouldn't go out of my way to come here again unless I needed a sushi fix in Monterey, but if I were a local, I'm sure I'd become a regular. 

Rating 7/10

January 22, 2011