Audio By Carbonatix
There were no sushi rolls on our table, and this drew attention. Well, maybe there was one: an untouched California roll stiffening on a small dish. It was ordered for the 4-year-old at our table, but she was more interested in the tuna sashimi, plucking thick strips from a bowl heaped with crushed ice, gnawing on them bare-fisted. The meat was so deep-red and purple that it resembled raw liver.
This was not extraordinary tuna, despite the boasting of Yumeya Sushi Bistro owner Jenny Neuburger, who claims her new North Dallas restaurant has the freshest fish of any Japanese restaurant in Dallas. These symmetrical scraps of meat were a little shy on richness, a bit too sinuous with an ever-so-slight fishy taste.
But this wasn’t all that held that 4-year-old’s interest, nor was it all that drew attention from the servers. It was the monkfish liver ($8). “Most people come here and eat rolls and tempura,” said one server. “Look at this.”
Yes, look at it: a blushing white lobe, meticulously sliced, bathing in a bowl of ponzu sauce. It’s a bit spongy, maybe even a little waxy, like a stiff pâté. But that 4-year-old went at it nonetheless, pinching it with her chopsticks and eagerly chewing the pieces. Not that the tempura is bad — fresh squid tempura ($6.50) is crisp and airy without any of the chalkiness that seems to infect many renditions.
Neuburger, who once owned a spot called Dijon French Bakery & Café, says she wants to jar North Dallas denizens with the roster of Yumeya’s Japanese cuisine — food that, while exotic here, is not unusual in Japan or in Dallas spots like Tei Tei Robata bar. Together with veteran Dallas sushi chef Keiichi Nagano (Hana, Awaji), they’ve set out to offer subtler Japanese cuisine that apparently slips the notice of suburbanites. “We don’t pride ourselves on rolls,” sniffs Neuburger. “We do a lot of real unusual dishes on the grill.”
One is espada ($8.50), a silvery fish with black spots. The meat is starched-shirt white, loosely textured with a sharp briny taste. Another is smelt ($5.50), three silvery whole fish laid out in a row on a plate with a blob of daikon radish pulp. “They have eggs in them,” squealed our server, like we had just popped a lucky sweepstakes soda-pop bottle cap. Their split bellies bulged with tarry roe, granting another dimension to this flaky, slightly pungent meat. Sun-dried sardines ($5), another silver fish trio, arrive with their heads cocked and their mouths wide open, as if they were reaching for dry flies in a Field & Stream ad. Moist and slightly sweet, the fish can be munched whole: heads, fins, bones, though the tail is a bit of a distraction.
Wedged into a corner of the sushi bar is a bin filled with crushed ice. The crystals hold an assortment of sea creatures: spiny lobsters, whole flounders, and scallops. Three young businessmen in harshly creased white shirts sit in front of the ice slot. Yellow and red ties are tossed over their left shoulders to avoid splashed soy. The chef pulls a snapper head and a mackerel body from the ice. He fuses the parts together in mid-air, mimicking a swim ripple. The men laugh.
What is there to make of that? Or the Yumeya beef ($10)? It looks like a clipping from a fern. A large, singed, curled lotus leaf cups parchment-thin sheets of marinated beef. The color is so earthy, it’s difficult to distinguish between the leaf and the beef, like the meat has been tattooed onto the veiny surface. Served just slightly warm (it cools rapidly), the meat is sweet, chewy and succulent.
Sushi salad lunch ($9) arrives with cupped leaves of iceberg lettuce filled with cuttings of octopus, crab, tuna, salmon, and shrimp on a supple bed of rice drenched in mayonnaise-soy dressing. This salad unravels in an explosion of flavors and textures in the mouth; it’s a delicious merging of delicate satiny nuances stoked with crispness. A ramekin of seaweed with paper-thin sheets of cucumber is plugged in the center of the plate.
Yumeya means “dream house,” and the space tries to live up to the name. A faux natural wood Pergo floor anchors a room flooded in blues. A mural, a kind of whimsical New Age dream with a moon, clouds, and stars, sloshes across the ceiling. Wood chairs have a half-moon mated to the flaring, curved edge of a sun carved into their backs, creating a kind of cosmic circle.
But where you would assume this place really would be stellar, it falters. Yumeya’s sushi is simply adequate. Tako (octopus, $4) was warm and planted on an undersized rice pad. Eel ($5) was assembled the same way, though the meat was rich and musky, compensating for the clumsy assembly. Hamachi (yellowtail, $6.50) was warm too, and it lacked rich, nutty flavor, though it disintegrated elegantly over the tongue.
The most successful dish was the one with the funny name. Marinated fluke ($5), translucent strips of a flatfish similar to a flounder, was delicately flavored and textured.
Yumeya lunch specials include soup, vegetables, and rice bowls of the day. Grilled salmon came with an intriguing bowl of mostly roots: carrot, ginger, and portobello mushroom with chunks of pork and lotus root. A firm, honeycombed wedge, the lotus root was crunchy and juicy with a slightly sweet flavor. But the salmon was a little off, texturally firm and flaky but slightly fishy. The rice bowl, white rice flecked with green that tasted like a strain of basil, was dry, sticky, and clumped. Miso soup with slices of fried tofu was richly flavored and broad, skirting the tendency of some of these bowls to come off like nuked seawater.
Yumeya is a lively space that bristles with whispered hipness: Tei Tei of the north, only a bit more approachable with a little less urban edge — and much cheaper.
