RESTAURANT REVIEW: Renovated Shogun rolls out sushi, hibachi

Imagine our surprise the other day when we popped into Shogun Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar on Cantrell Road in Little Rock's Riverdale neighborhood and discovered Michael Choi in charge.

And there was "Suki," who used to make sushi at nearby Chi's Asian Cafe, behind the sushi bar.

It was like old home week. If you lived in a Japanese restaurant.

Choi, whom we remember fondly from his days managing Kobe in west Little Rock and subsequently running Wasabi downtown, has been at Little Rock's most venerable Japanese restaurant for about four months. It has been long enough since we were last there that we cannot say with certainty that it's his doing, but the place has undergone a much-needed face-lift.

Walls separating the sushi bar and the front entrance-way from the dining room are gone, opening up the place so that, while the dining room is not exactly light and bright, is much less utterly cavelike, dim, grim and claustrophobic.

Hibachi tables have been moved into a much more accessible, logical pattern. Part of the carpeting has been replaced; unfortunately, you can easily tell which part is still the shabby, grubby carpeting that has been there since -- well, hopefully not since it opened in 1982, but certainly for too long. Removing walls has also made more room for table seating in the sushi bar, but you can still sit along the bar if you're so disposed and watch Suki at her work.

Shogun's sushi offerings are pretty standard, nothing too elaborate or fancy: 18 kinds of nigiri (fish on rice), the usual sushi suspects, from Amebi (sweet shrimp) to Unagi (freshwater eel), and three dozen rolls -- nothing very unusual in that list, either.

Well, except that our attention was caught by the Trust Me roll ($10.50, six pieces), with a core of spicy tuna rolled in rice and topped with yellowtail slices, simple but delicious. Intrepid Companion says Suki's even simpler Hot Tuna Roll ($6, six pieces), with spicy tuna and bits of cucumber and avocado inside, looks and tastes almost identical to the way she made it at Chi's, except the tuna is spicier.

Most places, if you order a sashimi plate (just the fish, no rice), the sushi chef elaborately spreads the fish slices about a large plate with decorative oshinko (pickled radish, shredded, white) and carrot (shredded, orange) for garnish/bedding, and adding to the fish chunks of tamagoyaki (cooked egg) and surimi (quasi-crab).

By comparison, the plate presentation of Shogun's large Sashimi plate ($39) is pretty plain. Suki squeezed onto a fish-shaped dish seven slices each of five fishes -- escolar, tuna, red snapper, salmon and yellowtail. No fuss, no muss, no hunting through and around the shredded oshinko or carrots for a fish sliver we might have missed. The sashimi tasted just as good or better, except for the salmon, which was practically frozen -- some of the slices had ice crystals in their centers. (On the other hand, we suppose we would prefer it be frozen than under-chilled.)

The hibachi table show was a little understated, but since neither we nor the other party seemed especially to be paying attention, that's probably just as well. The food was excellent -- the shrimp and scallops in our Jr. Seafood Lover's Feast ($19.95) were cooked and flavored just right, as was the shrimp and chicken in our Shrimp and Chicken ($18.95).

Hibachi meal prices include appetizer shrimp, a very delicately flavored onion broth (with a single mushroom slice floating in each bowl), salad (mostly iceberg lettuce, of course, but we can recommend Shogun's house ginger dressing, which coats it nicely and doesn't pool much at the bottom) and grilled "rare Oriental" vegetables (well, perhaps the menu means "rare" as opposed to "medium rare"). It's certainly worth an extra $3 for a monster portion of fried rice, "in the Shogun manner with eggs and special seasoning."

Service was good; our waitress, same on both visits, appeared to be the most experienced of a gaggle of young Asian women on the floor, two of whom, manning the counter, couldn't quite figure out what we meant when we asked after a to-go menu. Luckily, those menus are immediately accessible in a counter-top rack.

Weekend on 01/19/2017