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

 
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