Ro-Zu

In your average day you make thousands of decisions: what to wear, coffee or tea, and whether or not to ridicule that guy next to you for getting tea. Decide not to decide, at Ro-Zu.

Just opened as a bright, 18-seat Bella Vista corner BYO, Ro-Zu's serving traditional high-end Japanese Omasake-style: prepared using local ingredients by a classically trained chef who actually customizes a no-choice-necessary succession of course based upon individual diners' tastes (guess who'll be feasting on rice, Mr. Hates Fish?). After coming over and inquiring about what everyone digs, Ro-Zu determines a lineup, presented at staggered intervals to isolate flavor profiles in dishes like a princess cut lobster stuffed w/ crab & sea urchin (then topped w/ Japanese chili, butter & bread crumbs, and baked like a gratin), and Shiromi Usuzukuri: fluke presented like a poisonous puffer fish, garnished w/ an Italian sauce used for osso buco, and topped with a Yuzu vinaigrette & crispy elephant garlic -- just be careful not to spill a little trunk on your junk. Other dishes include a live scallop served as sashimi garnished w/ grapefruit in a habanero compote using just the fruit part of the pepper to cut the spiciness; a salmon dish garnished w/ roasted tomatoes topped w/ chorizo & a pineapple reduction; along with traditional sashimi & sushi (made w/ sake-grade Koshihikari rice), and specialties like orange clam, Hamachi belly, and horse mackerel, subject of far fewer random screams than the holy kind.

Ro-Zu takes their dedication up a notch by filleting eel on-site and making their own sauces in-house, including Ponzu, a special sushi vinegar blend which took seven years to perfect, and eel (made w/ bones from the filleted eel) -- which you'll love, 'cause as everyone knows, coffee drinkers are the eelest.