
Plainview: Fretting at Kumo Sushi
Dinner last night at Kumo and it was OK. Loved my oshitashi, boiled spinach that has had all the moisture wrung out of it, been squeezed into a cylinder, and is served, cold, with sesame seeds and a soy-based dipping sauce.
A sashimi platter was pretty, but none of the fish tasted like anything much. If I’d closed my eyes I don’t think I could have distinguished between the red tuna, white tuna, yellowtail or fluke. Even the salmon tasted faint.
Here’s something that annoyed me (for a change): The guy sitting next to me at the sushi bar yakking on the phone. More often than not when I’m sitting at a sushi bar, someone is talking on the phone and, I don’t know, it strikes me as somehow sacrilegious. Not that I’m suggesting that the proper attitude is to be constantly, reverently regarding the sushi chef—talking to a companion or reading a magazine is perfectly acceptable—but talking on the phone implies that you have no concept of how cool it is to watch a skilled practitioner put together your dinner. (For the record, I’m against cell phones at coffee-shop counters as well.)
Despite all my sushi-generated angst, at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night, Kumo was jammed; every table was occupied and there was much brisk takeout activity.
Kumo Sushi is at 18 Manetto Hill Mall, Plainview, 516-681-8881.
Newsday photo / Thomas A. Ferrara