Katsu Seafood & Steakhouse

For Oldest's birthday over the weekend, we went to Kastu Seafood & Steakhouse in San Marcos.

MIL had the galbi - I didn't try it, but Hubby said it was good, and MIL ate all of it, so I guess that means it's acceptable. Youngest had their beef yakisoba, which I also didn't try, but everyone who did said it was good.

Oldest got the kama, or yellowtail collar, as an appetizer. I love love love kama, and Katsu's is among the best I've ever had. The ponzu dipping sauce was a very nice accompaniment.

Oldest and her boyfriend shared the Triple Fantasy Roll and Red Caterpillar Roll. The Triple Fantasy Roll consists of tempura shrimp, cucumber, avocado, and "special sauce", and topped with tempura flakes, hot & spicy tuna, eel sauce, and hot & spicy sauce. Seriously, the word "sauce" appears three times in the description, and, you know what? Too much sauce.

The Red Caterpillar Roll is hot and spicy tuna and avocado inside, topped with spicy tuna. Consensus was that it was too mushy, given the spicy tuna and the avocado.

Hubby and I shared the Poke Combo Roll, the Katsu Seafood Salad, and an eel hand roll. The eel hand roll was, well, an eel hand roll. Good proportions of eel, veggies and rice, rolled nicely, easy to eat.

The Katsu Seafood Salad was wonderful - a variety of fish, seaweed, kaiware (radish sprouts), onion, and cucumber, with hot & spicy orange sauce. At first glance, it looked like way too much onion, but it was surprisingly mild. Makes me wonder if they soaked the super-thin slices after cutting and before plating. The fish was cut perfectly, the dressing wasn't overpowering. The seaweed was fresh-tasting and clean and crunchy.

The Poke Combo Roll was a California roll topped with spicy tuna, then topped with a seaweed salad, then doused in ponzu sauce. The avocado was cut slightly too large for my taste, but that's just me and my allergies. The crab, er, krab, was different from other CA rolls - instead of being chopped up and mixed with mayo, it was simply a stick of krab, which, in a way, is better than the mayo-soaked version. This may have been good, except for the fact that the roll was sitting in a pool of sauce upon its arrival - the rice soaked up all the sauce, and the roll became impossible to eat without making a mess.

On previous visits to Katsu, I felt that their sushi, while good, wasn't rolled very well. And this occasion was no different - the slices were cut unevenly, and didn't hold together. Don't you hate it when you go to pick up a piece of roll and it falls apart? Yeah. And the bigass end piece, that's twice the width of the other slices? Yeah, they have that too.

They also have some rolls on the menu called Large Rolls. These are seriously large - cut thin, but at least 3" in diameter. Can someone explain to me how to eat these?

All of my sushi-roll-complaining aside, I've never had anything there that doesn't taste good. But if you order any of the special rolls, you might want to ask for a fork (or a spoon!). I've definitely had better sushi (and sashimi, and hand rolls, etc) in SD, but Katsu is good if you have friends or family that won't eat raw fish, or have a large party and can't sit at the sushi bar. (My one sushi bar experience at Katsu was extremely pleasant.)

Yes, I'll go back to Katsu, but from now on, I'm ditching the sushi rolls, and sticking to their salads and sashimi (and kama!).