Bob Wasabi Kitchen's impeccably fresh fish, attention to detail elevate sushi standards

If food is the new red carpet, sushi is its haute couture: stylish, elegant and best served up from the hands of a skillful tailor.

At Bob Wasabi Kitchen on West 39th Street, a plethora of fashionable fish selections are prepared by the practiced hands of Bob Shin, a sushi chef with decades of experience.

The menu is not as large as some around town, forgoing the endless lists of cheekily named rolls for a more streamlined roster that highlights traditional nigiri, sashimi, maki rolls and chef’s specials. For the sushi-phobic, there are the cooked standards, such as gyoza dumplings, edamame and egg rolls, plus an udon bowl and some cooked rolls.

But the real highlights are found among the varieties of impeccably fresh fish. Even the simplest of ingredients, like a slice of salmon draped over rice dressed with vinegar, shows Shin’s subtle adherence to quality and craft.

Shin sources from around the globe, and the premium-quality slices of fish here are more sizable than you find in most sushi places, where cuts of fish are often no bigger than a USB thumb drive. Some slices are large enough that Shin makes small scores to allow the musculature of the fish to drape more easily over the small mound of rice like a fine piece of fabric.

Alongside the selections of sashimi (raw fish) and nigiri (the same fish served on rice) and standards like salmon, tuna and yellowtail are rarer offerings, like geoduck (a large member of the clam family), toro (fatty tuna belly) and uni (sea urchin roe).

While items like geoduck and toro are listed at market price and are not always available, they are luxuries worth the splurge. The thick, supple slabs of smooth tuna belly were garnished by a dab of ginger. As I raised each piece to my lips with chopsticks, I felt as if I were making a toast, as I might with a glass of Champagne. The perfect morsel, with rich striations of fat throughout, washed over my palate in waves.

The menu also includes the standard, from spicy tuna and California rolls to more involved specialty rolls, such as fried soft-shell crab or vegetable rolls.

But here even the usual suspects are elevated.

Shin offers a lovely version of the California roll with actual lump crab, rather than the bologna-of-the-sea imitation variety made from white fish. It may be only one ingredient different, but it makes a world of difference in flavor and effect.

The specialty rolls also stand out thanks to attention to the little things. The popular TNT roll is a mix of salmon, spicy tuna and yellowtail rolled and then fried tempura-style and served with two sauces. Often, a fried roll obscures the flavor of its ingredients, but the TNT roll uses the crunch and heat of tempura to enhance the varieties of cooler fish inside. Even the sauce complements rather than dominates the components, bringing a mix of spice and richness to each bite of the roll.

Another roll, the unagi mango roll, exhibits a smart mix of flavors and textures. The unagi — cooked freshwater eel — adorns the spicy tuna roll base in meaty slabs alongside thick cuts of fruity mango. What might seem like an odd combination made perfect sense as I ate it, each bite bringing a delicious mix of just the right amount of sweet and savory.

Freshness and preparation of ingredients are perhaps expected, but I especially like how Shin also treats temperature as an essential element, as illustrated by the warm topping of yellowtail and scallop on the baked hamachi roll or the savory effect of melting the fatty flesh of hamachi kama (the rare delicacy of broiled yellowtail collar) on one end of the spectrum and the cool crunch of squid and seaweed in the squid salad on the opposite end.

One dish perfectly encapsulates the scope of the sushi offerings. The chirashi, on the chef’s specials portion of the menu, is sashimi and assorted items served over a bowl of rice, although that description doesn’t quite do justice to the careful composition of large, unctuous drapes of sashimi alongside shredded daikon, spicy tuna, paper-thin slices of cucumber and bites of tamago (egg), octopus or squid.

This stylish bowl hit on every note. Buttery salmon and yellowtail belly played off the cool cucumber and lightly spicy strips of daikon radish. Lean cuts of ruby red tuna were enhanced with a bite of the sushi rice and earthy radish sprouts, or just sweet enough egg tamago might be enjoyed with a bite with perfectly al dente octopus. As in fashion, these elements became a perfectly chic ensemble in the hands of a skilled tailor.

And like a well-tailored suit or dress, the quality is often reflected in the prices. The chirashi bowl is $28, but the cost never seemed out of line with the value you receive. Sushi is one cuisine where it is better to pay for quality than to shop in the closeout discount aisle. I left each meal at Bob Wasabi Kitchen feeling fully satisfied, and that the price was justified.

This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Bob Wasabi Kitchen's impeccably fresh fish, attention to detail elevate sushi standards."