Restaurant Review: Get Adventurous at SoHo's Jinsei

1820 29th Ave. South (SoHo), Homewood
(205) 802-1440
www.jinseisushi.com

By Deborah Lockridge

When you walk into Jinsei in Homewood's SoHo complex, it almost feels like you're walking into a restaurant in New York or San Francisco – very un-Birmingham. Especially if you walk in later in the evening, when it's still going strong while most restaurants are starting their evening cleanup.

It's a small space, probably seating about two dozen between the serpentine-shaped lounge area where you can dine eating off coffee tables or the more regular dining table area. And, of course, there are about half a dozen seats at the sushi bar. They don't take reservations, but when we arrived shortly before seven there were plenty of spots available. It didn't take too long, however, to fill up.

There's also an outdoor dining area, which is actually where we started out. But as the sun went down and the breeze got chilly, and the gas heaters wouldn't work despite the very determined efforts of our waiter, he was able to get us a cozy spot inside in the corner of the bar area. The décor is sleek and minimal. The music is hip and modern (not Japanese-esque or bad pop or stale jazz-ish background music), just enough to provide some energy but not so loud to be obnoxious, even for the 40-somethings in our foursome.

We were in celebratory mode, so we ordered a bottle of champagne, and our server astutely observed that it would go very well with some sushi. Our thoughts exactly, so we ordered a Jinsei Special Roll ($13) and a Salmon Skin Roll ($8), and on our server's recommendation, something that wasn't on the menu yet, Yellow Tail Serrano ($15).

The Yellow Tail arrived first, beautiful tender pieces of raw fish, each topped with a sliver of sliced Serrano pepper, arranged like a sunburst atop a flavorful sauce. Both the sushi rolls were quite good, especially the salmon skin with its briny crunchiness. The special roll had two or three different kinds of fish, a bit of jalapeno and some vegetables. We purposely used very little wasabi because we did not want to overwhelm the flavors.

Really, you can get pretty good sushi rolls at a great number of places in town – even at Publix, although some would debate the quality of packaged grocery-store sushi. It's in the other dishes that Jinsei really shined, and our server did an excellent job of guiding us through a multi-course exploration of their menu.

The Jinsei menu is not designed for "linear" dining – the usual appetizer-salad-entrée-dessert type approach. Instead, it is divided into sections such as salad, cold dishes, hot dishes, tempura, nigiri/sashimi, and sushi rolls.

For our next course, we tried the carpaccio ($15), which was so thin and so tender it makes most carpaccio we've had seem downright tough.

A bottle of Takasago sake was the best sake we've ever had. I grew up thinking of sake as a hot beverage that reminded me of solvent. But this is high-quality sake ($45 a bottle), served chilled, and its crisp, dry rice went well with every dish.

Next came some more beef in the form of Jinsei's Kobe beef baby burgers ($18), which our server highly recommended. The four of us split the order (he cut each of the two burgers in half for us), and we have to admit, he may be right about them being the best burgers we ever tasted. They were incredible tender and beautifully seasoned, even without the Japanese barbecue dipping sauce, which had a strong molasses flavor. They came with tempura vegetables, which we liked so much we then ordered a mixed tempura platter to share as well ($15). You also can order various tempura items two to an order (including some you don't see on typical tempura platters, like squid and lotus root).

Getting back to fish, we sampled some fatty tuna and fatty salmon nigiri. The ootoro tuna nigiri was a special treat at $9 per piece, while the salmon was more affordable at $4 each. Both were incredibly tender, served on a small bed of rice and the usual sushi/sashimi soy-sauce-wasabi-ginger condiments. We used very little of them, not wanting to obscure the flavors of the fish.

A very fun and delicious dish was the River Rock Kobe beef ($15). Thin slices of beef come with two sizzling-hot river rocks and a dipping sauce. You dip your beef in the sauce, cook it on the hot rocks for a few seconds on each side, dip it again, then eat.

The only dish we would not order again was the Uni Shooters ($7) that we ordered to cap off the meal. With raw uni (sea urchin), a raw quail egg, sake and a couple of other things floating in a champagne glass, this looked a bit too much something from junior high biology class for our tastes, and the textures were just not pleasing. Maybe we're just not advanced enough sushi eaters – or maybe it's just a love-it-or-hate-it kind of treat. A Google search for "uni shooter" turned up similar concoctions at other restaurants around the country. A writer in the Houston Chronicle said the uni shooter at Sage 400 was "for advanced sushi eaters only." A post on Chowhound.com said, "definitely not for the weak stomachs."

Overall we would highly recommend Jinsei for sushi lovers and more adventurous diners looking for a higher-end Japanese dining experience in a non-traditional atmosphere. The food, the atmosphere and the service were all excellent -- although you pay for it. You can make a whole evening of it, as we did, enjoying conversation with friends or significant other in between courses; or just stop in before or after other evening entertainment (Jinsei has no official closing time, and they were still going strong when we left about 9:30).

Review published April 2008.