Well Fed On the Town

Hiro’s Sushi and Grill is a relatively new addition to Oakland, California’s array of restaurants on College Avenue. Don’t let its location fool you. You can almost walk right by the weirdly pink shopping area housing Hiro’s near the bottom of College. But something calls you back. Maybe it’s the rice paper screens, a menu hanging in the window, the sight of people enjoying good food in a relaxed environment.

With its simple bamboo tables, floor and counters, and lovely Japanese ceramic plates, Hiro’s is both effortlessly casual and aesthetically pleasing. The food is similarly comforting, yet precisely executed and carefully plated. Service is efficient and attentive. The owner—Hiro, I assume—patiently explains the specials and takes your order, while a sweetly smiling woman serves the dishes, taking great care to properly arrange the sushi, sake, and soy sauce bowls.

The sushi chef’s work area is located back and center, drawing the customer’s eye irrespective of seating. Like an audience facing a conductor, you can always see him working.

These are the highlights of my three dinners at Hiro’s:

Nasu dengaku, grilled eggplant with miso sauce
Firm hunks of Japanese eggplant are silky soft when you bite into them, melting in the mouth like butter. The miso sauce is slightly sweet, sesame seeds sprinkled on top add a nutty contrast to the sauce. A favorite appetizer.

Sunomono salad, seaweed, thinly sliced cucumbers, daikon radish sprouts, fresh crabmeat with a slice of lemon
This salad is actually a bowl with each ingredient separately arranged. Take a bite of each ingredient and chew them together. The flavors and textures are harmoniously complementary, such that you can no longer taste a single flavor, but the greater whole of all the flavors combined. Nutty, spicy, cool, sea, meaty, slippery, crunchy.

Dinner combo salad and miso soup
The salad, composed of fresh greens, is nice if not a bit overdressed. The dressing tastes of roasted sesame and Japanese mayonnaise. It’s a bit sweet for me, but I tend to prefer mild or moderate to bold sweetness. The miso soup is pleasant, with a few cubes of tofu and bits of seaweed.

Tempura vegetables
I sometimes get a hankering for tempura vegetables, but rarely indulge for fear of eating overcooked vegetables dripping with soggy breading. In contrast, Hiro’s tempura is excellent. The vegetables are just this side of crunchy, enveloped in perfectly crisp, grease-less coating. Very tasty with or without soy sauce.

Nigiri combo, sushi combo
I ordered the nigiri combo, while my dining companion ordered the sushi combo. Hiro’s sushi is presented simply and beautifully. Like any good sushi, the fish is the star with its fresh, clean flavors. I prefer to eat most of my nigiri plain, without dipping the fish into wasabi-spiked soy sauce, the better to taste its delicate flavors.

“Special Rolls”
The Golden Gate Roll beckoned–red tuna and mango over a spicy tuna roll. Photographic menus are often tacky, but the daintily colorful Golden Gate roll beguiles with its visual charm. I couldn’t bring myself to commit to an entire roll, choosing instead to sample various nigiri. It’s on my list for next time.

Sake
Warm sake sets the mood, served in small white decanters with little white sake cups. It cleanses the palate and complements every dish (naturally). If you’re not sure which one to order, ask for a recommendation.

Dessert, mochi ice cream
The waitress informed us that these were from Hawaii. Three flavors of mochi filled with ice cream: raspberry, green tea, and orange. The mochi could have used a bit of defrosting, it was quite chewy and difficult to cut even with the steak knife with which it was served. Nonetheless, it was tasty, simple, and delicately sweet.

Dessert, tempura bananas with vanilla ice cream
I don’t generally like bananas, but these were delicious. The tempura batter was perfectly crisp, the bananas were just soft enough without being mushy, and just sweet enough without being syrupy. The vanilla ice cream was pleasant, but I have had better.

Overall, Hiro’s Grill features clean, simple flavors precisely combined to create a harmoniously delicious dish. There is great beauty in stark simplicity. Take this Hokusai painting, for example. It depicts a huge wave about to crash into the ocean, a boat of helpless people below, and Mount Fuji in the distance, appearing scarcely larger than the people. The painting is highly stylized, almost cartoon-like in its simplicity, but very powerful. The kinetic energy in that wave is enough to send chills down your spine. You can almost hear it approaching, its curled, foamy fingers grabbing ever closer to its poor human victims. The boats are rocked helplessly to and fro, while the smaller wave, looking a lot like Mount Fuji, is soon to be engulfed by the approaching tsunami. The people in the boat have all prostrated themselves, perhaps in a vain effort to stay alive, or out of abject terror, or in shear awe of the great force of Nature that will surely send them to their watery deaths.

Hold on… Forces of Nature? Terror? Death? Weren’t we talking about a painting of boats on the sea? So simple, and yet… not at all.

At Hiro’s, starkly simple fresh ingredients form a pleasurably complex gestalt. A perfect marriage of flavors, textures, scents, and beauty on a plate.

Hiro’s Sushi and Grill
5335 College Avenue
Oakland, CA 94618
(510) 595-7388

Lunch Mon-Fri, 11:30am-2:00pm
Dinner Mon-Thurs 5:30pm-9:00pm, Fri-Sat 5:30pm-9:00pm, Sun 5:00pm-9:00pm