Williston Park: Asian salad enigma

I’ve had good luck in Asian restaurants located near Asian groceries, so I stopped into K’s Sushi Plus (formerly Sushi Plus), a few doors down from H Mart in Williston Park.

I’d been planning on sushi, but since the menu included a section on “Korean specialties,” I shifted my focus. (I’m all for encouraging the Korean owners of Japanese restaurants to offer more of their own national cuisine.) As it turned out, one of the specialties was something called Hwe dup Bop, “rice over assorted raw fish and vegetable.” Bingo.

While I waited, I was served a bowl of desultory miso soup and one of Those Salads. You know them. They are made of clumps of iceberg lettuce topped with one slice of cucumber and one slice of pink tomato. Over this, someone has dumped a ladleful of orange dressing. The whole thing’s in a glass bowl and has apparently been assembled and stored in the refrigerator hours ahead of time — that’s what accounts for the puddle of condensation at the bottom. “Why,” I lamented, silently, “do Japanese restaurants have so little respect for salad?”

Then, my Hwe dup Bop showed up, and everything got more complicated. In a large, glass bowl was rice  topped with cubes of raw fish — tuna, salmon, fluke — plus fake crab, shredded daikon radish and fish roe. There was also a great deal of shredded lettuce, nice lettuce. Red and green leaf lettuce and also some shredded shiso leaf. This was a well-thought out salad, I had to admit.

Hwe dup Bop was served with a small dish of spicy sauce, and I was instructed to mix it with the  contents of the bowl.  I did as told. It was delicious. Cool and light but given some heft by the rice. An excellent dinner.

K's Sushi Plus is at 412 Hillside Ave., Williston Park, 516-739-8188.