Ocean Blue Sushi for Sie Deen's Bday!

April 24th was Sie Deen's birthday! To celebrate, we went to Ocean Blue Sushi Club in Sunnyvale. It was Sie Deen and James, and Jeremy and I.  None of us had ever been there before, but as soon as we walked in, all of were amazed at how nice or "posh" the place looked.  It looked like quite a fancy and modern restaurant, not the usual Japanese home-y restaurant.  The price, though it was higher than usual, was thankfully was not at the level of how the place looked.

I got the sushi plate #2 with 8 pieces of nigiri and california rolls.  It also came with salad and miso soup. I must say I'm not a huge dressing fan, but the sesame dressing on the salad was delicious! It tasted a tad peanut-y to me, but I may have been completely imagining it.  As for nigiri, I was surprised at how large the slices of fish were.  It was draped beautifully over the rice with room to spare so that the fish was longer and wider than the rice. Yummm... oh how I heart sushi! There was maguri, salmon, hamachi, ebi, ika, hirame, a special white tuna, and a different salmon like fresh fish.  My only complaint would be that there was a little too much wasabi already on each nigiri for my liking.  The fish was very fresh and we loved the presentation. Notice the special white tuna with the gold flakes! I like controlling how much wasabi I consume with mu sushi and don't like needing to wince from the strength of the wasabi already on there.  I also do like sushi restaurants that use freshly grated wasabi which is actually NOT that strong but flavorful! I think the waitress may have been looking at me weird since I ate half the nigiri and left half for Jeremy, so he could try all the different kinds too! Hey, can't blame a girl from trying to turn her husband Japanese :)

Jeremy ended up getting tonkatsu which is one of his favorites.  At a different sushi place, he really likes the katsu curry.  He said that the katsu here wasn't as good as the Sushi Maru one.  However, it may be because of the lack of curry... who knows. The picture is a bit blurry but you can see there was quite a bit of katsu.  It was crisp and soft, so I thought it was well cooked.  It's not pictured here because we forgot to take pictures of the spider roll that came later.  It was delicious with the soft shell crab still hot from the fryer, with avocado and cucumber.  The only thing was there was a bit too much sauce for my liking.  It made the rice fall apart which made it a bit more difficult to eat but fun to watch someone else try!

James had read on Yelp when he was looking at this place that the Firecracker roll was their specialty, and everyone raved about it.  We had wondered what the difference was in the specialty rolls versus the regular rolls (without pretty pictures on the menu).  We soon discovered the specialty rolls not only had a few added ingredients, but they're HUGE.  The regular roll came with 4 regular roll sized pieces.  The specialty ones came with 8 LARGE rolls. Sie Deen really enjoyed her roll though- quite spicy as she likes it! I didn't try it but I'm not sure if I could handle the heat being the weak sauce person I am when it comes to spicy food...

Overall, we had a fantastic meal and I was very satisfied with the food as well as the service.  They DID run out of Aji which is my favorite fish for nigiri, so I couldn't substitute one of my nigiris for it.  If they had aji, who KNOWS how much I would rave about it!