The tails of live sweet shrimp are stripped of their protective armor and glazed with a fine gossamer of soy. It is topped with pickled scallion and ginger and a single brushstroke of soy sauce, and I cannot imagine a more perfect bite. As I bring the plate toward me, the mackerel’s iridescent skin shimmers between silver and blue, like one of those pictures that changes shapes depending on the angle at which you view it. “Aji,” says the chef as he’s handing over another piece of nigiri. The sea bass has a more pronounced salinity than the halibut. Although the tables around the dining room are set with soy sauce, there isn’t a single bottle at the sushi counter. Everything handed to me is meant to be consumed within seconds exactly as it is. The idea is that I’m not supposed to dip anything into soy sauce or muck anything up with wasabi. It’s topped with a few drops of what I presume might be shishito pepper oil. Next up is sea bass, a pinkish pearl essence of flesh, delicately crosshatched with a dozen meticulous knife marks. It tastes like fresh tears, and with this one bite, I know I’m in for an extraordinary ride. It’s the perfect size for a single, civilized mouthful. It’s topped with a single fleck of orange and red relish of some sort. The flesh is vaguely translucent on one end, fading to an opaque white on the other. The glistening sliver of halibut clings to an equally proportioned lump of rice. “Halibut fin,” the chef says, timidly, handing two small plates across the counter, each sporting a single piece of nigiri sushi. Almost immediately after this, the first course arrives. “Pickled” is perhaps too strong of a word for these cucumbers, though, which taste not of vinegar but of sake. It’s a bowl of lightly pickled cucumber slices. Within seconds of our sitting down, the first dish arrives. “The counter is for omakase only,” she says, apologetically. The hostess gives us one of those polite little bows. “Can we sit there?” I ask, pointing to the counter. When I originally stop in for lunch, the dining room is thronged, yet strangely no one is sitting at the sushi counter. Omakase is a simple word with a rather profound meaning that humbly translates to, “I trust and respect you. Omakase is that tradition of putting yourself in the hands of the sushi chef, letting him prepare whatever he desires. Before I stumbled upon Sushi Murasaki, I had been making my rounds among the county’s top-rated sushi restaurants for months, hoping to find a truly memorable omakase.
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