Sakana Sushi Café

Succeeding where others have failed can be lucrative: VHS dominated a market Betamax was unable to capture, and the XFL enjoyed prosperity unmatched by all previous pro wrestling/football hybrid leagues combined. Giving raw fish another shot on Sansom St, Sakana Sushi Café

Taking over the storefront that housed the recently shuttered Kami Sushi Express, Sakana's a narrow, 20-seat BYO with a four-stool sushi bar in a bright front area, and a lower-lit, wood-paneled rear dining zone tastefully adorned with traditional Japanese tapestries, hanging paper lamps, and a string of mirrors spanning the right-hand wall, for admiring how completely awesome you are with chopsticks. Menu starters range from baby octopus, sashimi plates (yellowtail, salmon, tuna), and pork or shrimp shumai, to crab stick, masago (roe), & cucumber salad, edamame in soy sauce, and thinly sliced rare tuna tataki, served w/ scallion and ponzu sauce, which promises rich flavor at first but then produces significantly decreased and inconsistent returns before dramatically collapsing. Larger dishes include sashimi platters (12-24 pcs); combos consisting of 6 to 20 sushi pieces paired w/ California, eel, or tuna rolls and a range of maki (shiitake, salmon avocado, white tuna); chirashi bowls of assorted raw fish scattered over a bed of sushi rice; and a variety of special rolls including the salmon/skin/roe Atlantis maki, the spicy shrimp/tempura/eel/scallion C.S.S., and the Christmas Roll w/ tuna, avocado, and masago -- oddly, yours doesn't come with coal

Sakana also offers 32 varieties of raw fish à la carte (available as sushi or sashimi), from giant clam, flounder fin, and Japanese red snapper, to scallop, mackerel, and the mighty king crab, whose domination of the ocean floor will be overshadowed by his dying cry: "He Ate Me!".