[Food Review] Nakato Japanese Restaurant

I promise, the only places I go to eat are not fast food restaurants. I just need a good excuse.

Friday night, my roommate decided that she needed to celebrate her birthday with fine dining and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. While the latter is a mainstay of downtown Atlanta, it's the former that I want to talk about here – because sometimes what you need is fantastic food that delivers every potent flavor and morsel that you could dream of having.

Nakato does just that.

The Where

Downtown Atlanta is an amazing place. Seriously, there are fantastic restaurants around almost every corner. Throw a rock, you'll hit the chef – but they're used to that these days.

Nakato is in the heart of Midtown, a place with clubs, restaurants of various genres, and people of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions. On the way we drove by the location where the BDSM club I used to hang out in just after high school used to be, down in the warehouse space. It's that kind of area.

You wouldn't know it once you get to the restaurant and begin to go in.

The entrance is classy. The kind of classy that usually rejects the entrance of people like me. The walk up the path from the back parking lot was impressive enough, creating the illusion of a place hidden away from urban life, even as one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world is breathing just through the tree line.

Inside you're greeted by a well-dressed samurai mannequin, before which you should definitely spend a moment of reflection and consideration before going in. Having passed under its inscrutable eyeless gaze, it's time to get into the meat of the matter.

Literally, in my case.

The How

Nakato's menu is a lot larger than you might normally expect for an upscale Japanese restaurant. Of course, almost as a requirement, half of the space is given over to active hibachi, on Friday night quite active indeed with cheering families, excited daters, and the tumultuous entertainment provided by the house.

Surprisingly, my group and I were feeling somewhat more reserved and opted for the dining room. It doesn't hurt that there was no wait to be seated, our arrival being somewhat later in the evening than most want to start having some of the best Japanese food in town – but that is just a reflection of inhuman insight.

Besides, I've had hibachi. If I was interested in someone saying my table on fire for me to eat, I'd go to Korean barbecue. If I just felt the need for a steaming volcano made out of onion, I don't need to leave home for that.

I came for something much more inscrutable.

I came for the appetizers.

No, seriously. I came for the appetizers.

My roommates came for the incredible sushi and the perfectly tuned entrées, but I'm an obligate carnivore. I make up for three vegetarians purely on my own. I don't like rice, I don't particularly care for most vegetables, so I go to restaurants as a connoisseur of the finest meats.

Not seafood. Land dwellers.

I know what I'm here for.

The What

You don't come to a restaurant like this just to hang out in the dining room, put your feet up on the chair across from you under the table, without your cell phone, and check the scores. You come to eat.

You come to eat aggressively.

We came to feed like beasts, and we were not playing.

Beef Tataki

I'm here for the beef tataki.

The menu has this to say about the beef tataki:

"Seared sirloin dressed with ponzu vinaigrette."

That's like describing the Mona Lisa as "some paint someone threw up on a canvas." It's like describing the side of the World Trade Center as "a hole." It's like describing the New England Patriots as "entirely unpleasant fellows."

It's an understatement.

I have dreams about this stuff. Literal, active, just a little bit sweaty dreams.

It comes undressed with a little bit of sesame oil to the side, a tiny grind of a little ginger and a few other things sitting delicately on top of sirloin which has been walked deliberately in front of a fire just enough to give it a scare but no more.

And then you dress it.

And suddenly you have an entirely new class of entity. There is a little bit of red onion to be drawn across each delicate piece. There is, surprisingly, some raw daikon radish which brings us certain sharp, potent edge to every bite. And there is the ponzu vinaigrette itself, carrying a little bit of citrus, a little bit of salt, and an electric pleasure.

From the first time that I had this dish many, many years ago, it was clear that this thing was going to be embedded in my twisted, black soul forever. It was amazing.

It comes out cold, not hot. The chill accentuates each individual component when you put it in your mouth. Then you chew and the delicate texture of thinly sliced steak perfectly cut across the fiber comes apart, swirling around with all of these other exciting pieces.

It's a shame that it doesn't come with more pieces on the plate.

Which is exactly why I ended up eating three orders of beef tataki over the course of the evening.

This is how you live well.

California Roll

Look, I apologize. I am not your sushi guy. I tend to avoid this sort of thing given an opportunity.

On the other hand, all of my roommates adore sushi and that they are as much connoisseurs of such things as I am more land bound foodstuff. I would not presume to speak for them when it comes to judging the quality of this California roll.

This California roll without avocado, deliberately so, by request.

I can tell you that the noises which came from around where I was sitting as piece after piece of sushi disappeared as fast as party attendees when it's cleanup time were not just a little pleased but incredibly pleased. They were noises of satiation, of pleasure, of transcendence.

I was starting to worry. I hadn't driven and if too much more pleasure were to pass through lips, I was afraid that the California roll was about to be taken home and pleasured in private, and I'd have to hitchhike back to the foot of the beanstalk that leads up to the Satellite of Hate.

I'm too pretty to hitchhike.

Apparently the California roll wasn't too pretty to eat or to luxuriate in.

Spicy Salmon Roll

Of course, one roll wouldn't have been sufficient for two roommates. That's insane. They both love sushi entirely too much for that. And no one should engage in that much self-denial, ever.

Instead, we have the spicy salmon sushi roll.

Minced salmon. Green onion. Lightly crusted on the outside of the perfectly done sushi rice with sesame seeds. Simple, tuned to deliver maximum sushi effect with mute power.

Here pictured with just a little ginger and wasabi, in case you want to make your experience a little more edgy, your usual Japanese steakhouse sauces which I'm sure everyone in my audience can recognize that 100 m at this point, and a surprisingly understated broth soup.

Not miso. Broth. Which caught me by surprise, too. It had all the umami that you might want to prepare your pallet with an unctuous coating, one which goes extremely well with some of the more acidic flavors on display.

Contrast. That is an element which is sometimes missing a little too much from a well constructed dinner. It needn't be.

Tempura Vegetables

One of my roommates has a sick sense of humor.

Actually, that's unfair. She just knows that when it comes to the competition between vegetables and I, vegetables always win. It's much like holding up a cross in front of a vampire, driving them away with the holy power of goodness. I refuse goodness. I refuse healthiness.

Even if that healthiness is deliciously deep-fried and amazing.

(I can attest to this personally only because one of the elements is deep-fried tempura onion, which I tend to reserve as my "tax" for not leaping on everyone in the room and eating their eyes while I wait for my next order of tataki to arrive.)

The tempura here is so delicate, so crisp, that you can almost forget that inside is a dead plant.

Also of note is the green, herbed sea salt which is served with the tempura vegetables, not just because individual desires for saltiness level vary widely between individuals but because the herbs bring a very notable scent which lingers over the table and intensifies when it's applied to the tempura. The act of sprinkling the seasoning improves the flavor of everyone's experience.

That is a well honed machine.

Hibachi Steak and Fried Udon

Surprisingly not mine. I'm treating a place like a tapas bar, remember?

Typically hibachi steak is hibachi steak no matter where you go. It's a fairly decent cut of sirloin, cooked on a hot, flat, iron surface with a little butter, a little lemon, and the usual mix of vegetables: onion, broccoli florettes, sometimes a little carrot. You know what it is. You've probably had it a dozen times.

In this case, rather than fried rice it's served with a little bit of udon noodle for a little bit of a twist.

This is one of those dishes which can only exist in a binary state.

Either it's good, in which case it's very good, the flavors are well mingled, the texture is spot on and a nice medium rare, you've got a little bit of crusting on the outside from the flattop being hot enough to actually get a proper sear on, and the vegetables are just beginning to get well caramelized around the edges.

Or it's bad, where the steak gets overcooked (and it's always overcooked, never undercooked), the vegetables are unseasoned, and you come away after eating feeling that you have wasted your time.

This is not the latter. Predictably, it was extremely well executed – if a little boring. I may have stolen a piece or two just to spice things up. A little bit of ginger sauce on the steak with a bit of the grilled onion in every bite really makes a difference to bringing out every last bit of available flavor with this.

Beef Negimaki

You cannot live solely on beef tataki.

All right, I probably could. But it would make for a lousy overall meal because you would have an insufficient amount of contrast between plates.

To help drive that contrast, I decided to have a little bit of beef negimaki which the menu describes as:

"Sirloin beef wrapped around green onions grilled to perfection."

You've heard me talk about their tendency to understatement before.

This is a hot dish. Especially eaten with the chill of the beef tataki, alternating bites with this are incredible. The sauce at the bottom is a homemade teriyaki. Not the stuff from the bottle that you're used to but an actual in-house made teriyaki and you can tell. Not just because of the flavor but because of the texture.

This teriyaki clings. It has been reduced down far enough that it acts like a really good glaze, but not so far that it behaves like a glue. A lot of teriyaki is overwhelming with saltiness which makes it very difficult to balance with more subtle flavors. At no point does the teriyaki here overwhelm the flavor of beef.

In fact, I'm not a big fan of the green bit of green onions. It looks too much like a vegetable. We're not really on speaking terms. But here the green onions are literally infused with the juices of the grilled beef, making the entire bite into a sublime experience. The very slight bitterness of the green onion stands next to the sweetness of the teriyaki, surrounded in the solidity of the grilled beef and it's just an amazing experience.

I just had a terrible realization.

This is my sushi. This is the kind of thing that I would eat if I were eating sushi. Replace all of the rice with meat, replace most of the vegetables with onion, add a lovely sauce, serve it hot, and here we go.

(Yes, I know – that's basically a recitation of the definition of anti-sushi. Go with me here.)

Pork Kakuni

All meals must come to an end. Whether we like it or not. Eventually, you simply run out of places to store bits of meat in your innards and can no longer properly appreciate the acquisition of more.

It's a terrible state of affairs and I have taken it up personally with the designer, but this is what we're stuck with.

I am never going to end a meal without dessert, however – but my taste in dessert is a little strange.

I'd been eating beef all night. Multiple orders of tataki, that exquisite negimaki, stolen bits of steak, and it was time for a bit of a gear change.

Pork. In particular, pork kakuni.

As usual when we are talking about Asian pork dishes, we're not really talking about just a random slice from the loin. We're talking about pork belly. We're talking about that delicious part of the pig which has alternating layers of delicate fat and tender muscle tissue, material which will take up any flavorful fluid that you simmer it in, and if you take the time to do it slowly, to do it carefully, you can end up with a dish which transcends expectation.

Like this one.

I'm glad I saved this for last, not because it wasn't as good or because it was the best, but because the flavor profile was extremely different. I tend to prefer quite strong flavors. Not necessarily spicy, but bold, very present on your tongue.

This is not that kind of flavor.

The pork kakuni is subtle. Almost maddeningly subtle. There is flavor there, quite a lot of it, but in a very quintessentially Japanese way it doesn't dominate anything. It exists in a careful balance and lets the flavor of the pork belly, the fat and the meat, reduce until they are only slightly distinguishable.

This is the kind of dish where a pretentious reviewer would say "there are notes of…"

There are notes. The whole dish is made of notes. The resulting melody is soft, it's quiet, but it's distinctive.

As a way to end my evening at Nakato, it was perfectly selected.

Epilogue

I got fed. Well.

In terms of service, Nakato has been impeccable every time I've ever gone over the many years. Our waiter was young, enthusiastic, and seemed terribly scandalized when we started talking about going to Rocky Horror later that evening. I described it as "Broadway if you had dropped a load of acid first," which may have put him off slightly.

It was a good time, is what I'm saying.

Sometimes I wish I had a better camera to engage in my food hipster photography, but the camera you have is always better than the camera that you don't. If I brought every tool that I wanted when I went to a restaurant to eat, no matter what that restaurant was, I'd be bringing some sort of ridiculous mirrorless rig and 350 pounds of lighting equipment.

(Lighting is always the problem in restaurants. If you ever see good food photography in a restaurant, just know – they brought their own lights.)

If you find yourself in Atlanta and you're looking for a fine, fine Japanese meal – go to Nakato. They will take care of you. They will look after you. And you can gorge on some of the best meat available in the region.

What else could you ask for?

• Nakato Japanese Restaurant - http://nakatorestaurant.com/
• All photography courtesy of @lextenebris
• Feel sorry for my roommates, they have to eat with me.