Nakama Restaurants

salmon nabe is LEGIT. The grill is super good too. But everytime I eat something fish related from them I get a stomach ache. So i guess their stuff is not fresh. But its good. lOL

I've been enjoying sushi in Lafayette for several years, but for one reason or another, I had never made it to Nakama until yesterday. Admittedly, I tried once before, but they were closed - they have dinner only hours: 5-9p tuesday through sunday.

The dining area at Nakama seems small. Some tables with hibachi setups are kind of walled off on the sides with 4-top tables in the middle of the room, all having a view of the sushi chef. The waitress was friendly, but seemed a little scatter-brained. The menu seemed to have a lot of non-sushi offerings, but all the pictures were hand drawn. It was cool looking, but didn't give me a very good idea of the food. We were there for sushi anyway. The sushi menu was fairly humble. 5 or 6 specialty rolls, and around ten standard rolls. The standard rolls were priced pretty well at around $4 each, but the specialty rolls we $10 and up with little reason.

We ended up with an appetizer of edamame and 5 rolls. Two of the rolls were gigantic - too big to comfortably eat, kind of like Kokoro. The other three were standard size. The rice was good, moist if not a little too sticky, and the ingredients all seemed fresh and tasty.

If I go back, I'd like to check out the at-the-table barbeque. They used wood fires instead of charcoal. It smelled good in a campfire kind of way, although it was a bit overwhelming since we weren't expecting it. Regardless, I bet it would make for same tasty grilled meats.

I came here for the sushi and left disappointed.  Basic roll selection, nothing particularly original.  I tried the spider roll and the dragon roll, which were much too large- about twice the diameter of a normal roll, entirely unwieldy to eat- certainly nothing special, especially after crumbling into the soy sauce after trying to take a bite out.  There are much better options in the Lafayette area.

I did see a couple other tables with the BBQ, and that did smell very good, so I might go again to try that.  And sushi does come with free tea, so at least there's that.