Golden Dragon Express & Grill

Let me point out, right off the bat, that I'm not even going to bother reviewing the Chinese; didn't try it, can cook authentic Northern Chinese fare on my own, and given that point I'm certainly not going to pay for the Americanized variety elsewhere.

What my friend and I went for is the sushi, which is actually quite legitimately decent.  If I were rating on the South Bend scale this place would get a four or a five simply because it has fresh fish and good balance; since I'm going to rate on the same scale I do everywhere else, it's getting a three.

Nonetheless, that puts it quite solidly in the top slot for sushi in Michiana, at least to my knowledge.

We wandered in and were promptly greeted by a server, who took us to our table, ducked out and brought back a tea kettle and water for everyone without our having to ask.  The tea was... normal; good for bagged green tea, but bagged nonetheless.

The decor was... plain.  Nice fountain in the entryway, but clearly just another restaurant trying to get a little atmosphere out of an old building on the cheap.  This is not me complaining, mind you, just admitting reality; it didn't detract from the experience much, since we were starving and would have gladly walked into a trash-pit had we felt it'd have good food.

We stalled for a few moments while we perused the menu and eventually settled on an all-sushi meal; I've already forgotten the name of my friend's order but I just picked up a simple spicy tuna roll and a California roll, along with a bowl of miso.  The miso was acceptable but not amazing; it's hard to review miso but this was far from the worst I've had.  Both rolls were good; fresh fish and fresh vegetables, avocado at the peak of ripe perfection, good flavors, couldn't have asked for more, except that the wasabe was weak.  I piled on a good two or three grams one time and still wasn't tearing up, at which point I wrote it off as a bad job.  The soy sauce was also Kikkoman's, which is a huge pet peeve of mine; I want soy sauce, not salt water.

With those two caveats, however, I'm prepared to go out on a limb and say that this is the only place in this area where one has a hope of getting what is, even by coastal standards (I'm East Coast, my friend is West), pretty good sushi.

On a side note, the staff is very friendly and accomodating; a couple sitting in the corner with four relatively young children was getting a fair amount of help from their server in keeping them engaged and entertained.  I think there's a children's menu though I paid it no attention, of course.

Update: if you ask for your ma-la chicken to be extra extra extra extra so spicy as spicy as you can 11 out of 10 please...then you end up with something where you might break a sweat at the end of it.