mikuni japanese restaurant

this post is long overdue. i've been working on my first challenge for project food blog (pfb) which is ready to be voted on! :)

anywho, i found myself flying to sacramento again for labor day weekend. i suppose that's part of being in a long distance relationship - a lot of travel time. ryan and i ended up at a lot of asian food places that weekend from chinese to thai and then finally to a japanese restaurant which we were craving for quite a while. we yelped for a good japanese restaurant and found mikuni restaurant located in fair oaks which is a few minutes away from folsom. mikuni has six other locations in california and one in colorado.

as soon as we got the restaurant, we noticed that it was packed with customers. good thing for us, we didn't really have to wait since there were still a few more tables available. mikuni's decor was a mix of modern paired with some japanese influence. they have a sea water aquarium by the door and a sushi bar in the middle of the room where the sushi chef makes your orders fresh. i remember there was a baseball game playing on the flat screen tvs which are mounted around the restaurant. what caught my eye were the cabinets behind the counter - mikuni sells tshirts of their own with whimsical and cute designs that i was tempted to get one.

since their sushi roll selections are extensive on top of the other dishes they offer including nigiri, traditional entrees and sashimi, etc, it took us several minutes before we could decide what we wanted for that evening.

just like any other japanese restaurant, they start us off with a warm bowl of miso soup. i love any kind of soup on any kind of day so they were off to a good start :)

sake nigiri | salmon nigiri sushi

we only got an order of nigiri sushi for the sole purpose of tasting their sushi in the simplest and purest manner. what better way to taste the freshness of the ingredients and the good flavor of the rice which are the important aspects in creating delicious sushi. the salmon was buttery, fresh and melts in your mouth coupled with the well seasoned rice... tasty :) i usually love my sushi with good wasabi and soy sauce but mikuni's wasabi surprisingly didn't pack as much punch as i wanted it to be which was quite disappointing.

benjamin roll | deep fried shrimp, crab salad, avocado, eel, sea steak, special sauce, lightly torched, jalapeños, masago and onions

the insides of the roll were filled with tempura shrimp and crab salad, topped with avacado and slightly torched fresh tuna. the rolls are painted with zig zags of sauces and garnished with masago, green onions and some slices of jalapeno. the tempura shrimp is distinct and i love the crunch of it and i can taste the slightly torched tuna. i like my tuna slices slightly torched because there is that textural difference of the cooked outer layer and the fresh raw fish that melts in your mouth on the inside. the way i evaluate how well the rolls are made is by making sure it doesn't fall apart when i pick it up with my chopsticks. this roll passes the test without much of a problem. the issue i have with this roll is the fact that the natural flavors of the ingredients are masked almost entirely by the sauces. even though the sauce is good but too much isn't good in this case.

peter 2 roll | deep fried shrimp, crab salad, spicy tuna, avocado, eel, seared tuna, 2 spicy dream sauces, masago and onion

similar to the other roll we ordered, the slight differences are the eel pieces that envelops the roll and the pairing sauces. the peter 2 roll is a combination a lot of different flavors ranging from the slight sweetness of the unagi and the butteriness of the avacado to the crunchiness of the shrimp tempura and the freshness of the tuna paired with the sauce. this had a tad too much of the sauce as well which we could have done without on the bottom of the plate but i liked the flavors of the roll itself. 

mikuni's japanese restaurant offers a wide variety of japanese food that may satisfy your cravings. would i return for a second time? probably... but i'd request them to go easy the sauces on their specialty rolls.

disclaimer this is written based on my personal experience and opinion. experiences and taste buds may vary for others