For the last 12 years, Naniwa in River North has had some of the city’s best sashimi and its worst rolls. We always thought this was Bobby-San’s punishment for stupid Americans who thought they liked sushi but were afraid to order it without mayo. Well sir, whatever changed your mind, after more than a decade, we appreciate it.

In their 12 years of existence, Naniwa has come a long way. It has always been common knowledge that a spicy tuna roll was the restaurant’s way of getting rid of fish that didn’t make the cut, so to speak, for an order of sashimi. Belly meat is easy to turn into a delightful order. Often it’s billed as toro and sold for multiples more than regular old maguro. It melts in your mouth and is mostly worth the price. But the closer one gets to the tail of the venerable fish, the more ugly white tendons and sinews one has to cut around to keep the customer from chewing gristle. These precise navigations around unappetizing connective tissue usually makes for pieces far too small to present as stand-alone. So what to do? Being the shrewd economists that the Japanese have always been, they rolled these scraps into the now-famous tuna maki. I have no idea who was the genius that also made it spicy but I tip my hat to him.

In any case, Naniwa used to present spicy tuna rolls with not only the scraps but also, the tendons themselves. They filled it with gobs of spicy mayonnaise hoping we wouldn’t notice. We always did. Nearly all of their rolls used to follow the same discipline. Or lack thereof. It was the greatest disparity in Chicago sushi. How could a restaurant serve A+ sashimi and complement it with rolls that would make for better pet food? Thus, not wishing to be gagged by long fibers of sinew stretching down our throats but unwilling to give up the sashimi, we would routinely order sashimi delivered from Naniwa and rolls from somewhere else. Naturally, this became tedious as it involved 2 disparate arrival times, 2 delivery fees, 2 tips, etc., but the sashimi was worth it. However, in 2009, things began to change.

We first noticed the new spicy tuna roll at a table next to us when we were doing a rare eat-in at Naniwa. It looked great. Unlike the thick orange paste that looked like tuna sausage without casing and was the roll’s typical texture, this one had thick chunks of real tuna with thin layers of spicy mayo between them. Could this be true we wondered? We had to see for ourselves. You can imagine our surprise when that first morsel slid past our tongues and did not bleed out on contact. The pieces we big, fresh and gristle-free. Could it be that, after 12 years of having the city’s worst tuna rolls, the head chef actually noticed? A sushi restaurant that gives the take-home crowd sashimi just as good as that served in the dining room is a rare find. And once found, seldom abandoned. For this reason, 63.98% of my 2009 sushi budget has gone to Naniwa. I only wish it could have happened sooner.

How does a place remain open for years and years when fewer than 10% of its tables are ever filled and dining room ineptitude can hold its own with LA’s laziest? Several ways:

1.) Brand-showroom – OK with losing money

2.) Money-laundering front

3.) Successful daddy schooling loser sonny

1: brand-showroom works well for Nokia and Levi’s but not too many people go to a restaurant to browse. 2 and 3: it’s kinda hard to launder in the days of credit cards and given how long Kamehachi Old Town has been around, I’d say the offspring are either entrenched or homeless. Whatever. Kamehachi Streeterville is here to stay.

Upon entering the restaurant, one detects a faint trace of a disagreeable odor that seems like a mixture of spoiled fish and industrial cleaning solvent. Not good for a sushi restaurant. Getting seated can take several minutes and having a waiter notice can take multiples more. In all fairness, today, the waiter was prompt, polite and attentive and did an overall excellent job. However, considering that I used to work a block away and spent a fair number of lunches waiting on the waiter I can safely tell you that this experience is atypical.

When Kamehachi Streeterville first opened, getting a sashimi plate could (and did) take 45 minutes+. My party walked out before. Now, getting sashimi, 6 pieces of nigiri and 4 rolls took less than 15. Yes, nothing says PIG like when they slide over the table next to you so everything can fit. For two people. Shut up. The point is that it came, was timely and above all, GOOD! With a major exception. The tuna sashimi sucked great pacific garbage patch.

Dear Kamehachi, when one orders a sashimi plate, please do not think that you will make up in quantity what you lack in quality. Mind you that all I know about this I read in Sushi Economy but the closer a cut gets to the tail, the more of those icky white sinews and tendons one has to chew. Fish gristle is not a good thing. Tuna should melt in your mouth. I looked at the beautiful, deep red cuts of tuna nigiri at the table next to us and drooled. Why not use such cuts with ours? Would this refuse not be better camouflaged in a spicy mayo roll than a sashimi platter? You bring great shame to your family Streeterville-san.

So as not to end on a bad note, the summer rolls with spicy chili oil are the best rolls on the menu (the best of many menus) and shrimp tempura is battered and fried all over not leaving you with a raw tail to swallow like at some places. (Yes, of course I eat the tails and so should you.) And the rest of the sashimi was good too. If this experience is now the norm at Kamehachi Streeterville then I guess I can start coming again. Just get rid of that strange smell.

Dear Japonais,

On January 27th, in the year of our Lord and Savior, 2007, I attempted to have dinner at the restaurant. Being an experienced Japonais diner, I made reservations nearly a month in advance. One would think that such diligence would escalate one’s priority past the walk-in crowd. Maybe last year.

As the clock swept well past reservation time, I checked with the host several times and was told after each one that our table was “paying” which presumably meant that it would be available shortly. After 50 minutes of “paying,” my companion and I gave up on the hope of a fine dinner and decided to eat at the bar. This decision had consequences to which we’ll come back in a paragraph.

Having lived in LA for most of 2006, I have become accustomed to dining room ineptitude. I even forgive most of their infractions just as I would a misbehaving child, contenting myself to an eye-roll and audible sigh. But I hold Japonais to a higher standard. One does not need to be an operations guru to know that a 15 minute delay is uncomfortable but tolerable, 30 is annoying and beyond is simply unacceptable. One also must not blame the table-hoarding patrons as it is not their job to manage flow. When diners are taking their sweet time and reservations are crowding in, suck it up and buy the hoarders a bottle of cheap champagne (at the bar) and watch how quickly they’ll high-tail it out of their seats.

Now, we must re-visit the unfortunate consequences of the bar’s abbreviated menu.

In LA, revelers are limited in their alcoholic intake because of the inevitable drive home. A person can easily pull a Paris Hilton by having a margarita on an empty stomach. Therefore, in Chicago, one is forced to capitalize on the ability to drink to the point of dementia and take a cab home. My companion’s and my alcoholic intake, although impressive, is tempered by the size of the evening’s dinner, however, to limit ourselves this day seemed like a colossal waste of a Saturday night in the city. And so, there we sat, angrily drinking at the bar with nothing but a few rolls to distract our respective digestive systems from metabolizing the free-flow of alcohol. My memory failed somewhere during the fourth bite of the Spicy Mono Roll but I am told that we had gone to several places hence.

As my Sunday fell casualty to Saturday’s hangover, I have no one to blame but you for not keeping my reservation time and interfering with a precise and calculated formula for alcoholism and thus ruining my weekend. Although your food prevents you from making the full descent into restaurant mediocrity, your operations have certainly deployed your landing gear.