Sushi: the Sparkling vs Sake debate

Last night Mr. Lush and I had sushi with our good friend, Mrs. Luce at Tachibana's. Tachibana's, although they have sub-par service, has great sushi. Although, honestly, they are not my absolute favorite in the city, its really because of my love affair with The Spicy Roll, which Tachi's is not the best at. Although we did finally find one spicy roll we liked there-the Arrowhead. It happens to be $13, but its really good and the rest of the menu is on the cheaper side. (ie $3.50 for a salmon/avocado roll). The Arrowhead may not be as "authentic" as other rolls, but I always say I prefer Americanized versions of ethnicity anyway.

But I digress. Anyway, Mr. Lush and I typically have sake when we eat sushi by ourselves but much to our delight, Mrs. Luce rather enjoys sparkling with it and brings it to our sushi pairings. Much to our dis-light (is that a word? It should be) Mr. Luce is allergic to sushi, so our sparkling and sushi dinners with the Luce Family are rare and are only when Mr. Luce is out of town. But that makes them rather special and should be celebrated.

The question this begs to ask, is which do Mr. Lush and I prefer with sushi? Sake or sparkling? Sometimes when we are at home, and get sushi to go, if we happen to have a bottle of sparkling we will drink it, but we never bring it with us. The truth is Mr. Lush and I eat sushi about once a week, and Mr. Lush isn't a big of a fan of sparkling as I am, and although he indulges me now and again, sparkling once a week is a lot for someone who doesn't love it.

We have tried nicer sake quite a few times. Seki in The Loop has a decent sake menu in which they list things based on how sweet / dry /etc they are AND let you have a sampler with 3 of them. Of course, I know nicer sake exists in other places, but no one else gives you the handy dandy menu or lets you try 3. We played around with that for a bit and have tried other places as well. But, alas, we just don't like it that much more than hot sake. There's something nice, almost right, about hot sake and sushi to me. And, since its anywhere between 40-400% cheaper than nice cold sake, we'll stick with that. It almost justifies our once a week sushi habit-look at what we're saving by having cheap hot sake instead of nice cold sake???

I was fortunate enough to have Cristal once with sushi...now that I would force Mr. Lush to deal with once a week, should a gross dozen cases of Cristal land on our porch. Since I don't see that happening, I guess we'll continue to have sparkling with Mrs. Luce and sake by ourselves.

Thanks Mrs. Luce-for the company and the sparkling!