Sushi Hai has three owners and three floors, so it’s no surprise that this casual new Japanese eatery in the Highlands neighborhood seems to sport multiple personalities.
There’s the friendly, edamame-green sushi bar on the street level, a bright, cheerful spot with a laid-back atmosphere, including the bar itself to the left and the table-lined wall to the right. The sushi chefs are savvy and convivial, while the servers in this section bumble about, forgetting to pour water, clear dirty dishes or, well, serve.
One floor down sits the more formal dining area, with a private tatami room set up for groups of up to eight to sit on the floor and eat, so inviting with its glass-paneled doors and fabric cushions you just wish you had eight people right then and there. The rest of the space is as appealing, a study in shades of gray on the walls and blond and dark woods on the tables, chairs and floor.
The staff on the middle level is a mix of perky efficiency and busboys who serve so intensely it seems to be a form of stalking. Take two sips of water, and someone is there not 10 seconds later refilling, or snatching plates away before even checking to see if you’re done with the sauces. They pace the floor as if training for a service triathlon, running the length of the room literally every five minutes, and it became so uncomfortable on one visit that we stopped drinking.
In the stone-floor basement, the Hai Bar presents yet another Sushi Sybil, a groovy place to check out the restaurant’s sake flights and lean with the velvety pillows along well-cushioned walls, kick back and listen to a variety of music. The bar service is steady, assisted by servers from other floors when food is involved.
The food itself at Sushi Hai – without hearing it spoken, the word hai can mean ash, lung, actor and yes, but it’s probably safe to assume that here they’re saying “Sushi Yes” – has undergone a bit of an identity shift since the place opened in September, losing the flashy tableside hibachi service and reworking a few of the dishes.
“We decided to drop the hibachi because it was just too much,” says James Sanchez, who owns Sushi Hai along with partners Ken Griffin and Steve Naples, who also owns the Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli mini-chain, one outpost of which sits across the street. “We wanted to streamline the menu a bit, make it more focused and refined.”
The dinner menu is tight and simple, with about a dozen dishes supplementing the sushi and sashimi roster. Those come after the soups, salads and appetizers, of course, which can make a meal at Sushi Hai a lengthy proposition, because timing here can be a bit dicey.
But some items were worth the wait, such as the sushi, which always took a long time but was well-prepared, generously portioned and fairly priced, unlike some things here, which are oddly overpriced.
Sushi highlights, all priced for two pieces, included salmon ($3.95), tuna ($4.95), yellowtail ($4.95) and snapper ($4.95), while the only real dud was the unagi, or freshwater eel ($4.25), which arrived squishy and limp, with a lackluster sauce.
Their best roll was the Las Vegas ($9.95), salmon, cream cheese and crab wrapped in nori and deep-fried, although the “crunchy” ($7.95), shrimp tempura with avocado and smelt roe topped with tempura chips was fun, too. The spider ($8.50), a traditional classic soft-shell crab roll with avocado, mayo and daikon sprout, had been too loosely assembled and kept falling apart.
Sushi Hai’s miso soup ($2.50) was tasty but more expensive than most, which usually come in at $1.50, and the yakitori ($7.95) price seemed way out of line for the measly bits of chicken meat and the skinny strip of beef we received, each skewered and slicked in sauces that tasted hardly different from each other, although one was supposed to be teriyaki and one a wasabi pepper concoction.
Better were gyoza ($5.95), five pork and vegetable dumplings seared lightly and set down with a sweet and lightly spicy chile sauce, and the calamari ($5.95), a nice portion of squid rings thinly battered and fried and set atop a ponzu sauce speckled with smelt roe. The California salad ($11.95) was a winner, too, and worth the hefty price tag, especially to share, because it offered plenty of avocado, fresh greens and other vegetables, with a mellow sesame-miso vinaigrette that tied it all together.
The entrees were a similar split, with dishes such as the kasu-marinated black cod ($16.95) being so well balanced and flawlessly cooked that it was hard to believe the encrusted ahi tuna ($18.95), with its dry, overcooked fish, its weird avocado relish and watery wasabi pepper beurre blanc, also came from the same kitchen.
Kasu is created by the residue left over from fermenting sake, and it is a classic Japanese marinade for seafood, but particularly black cod, whose soft flesh just soaks it up. This results in a faint sake smell and taste, and with the enoki mushrooms in the black cod dish, it was simply an inspired combination.
Another dish that worked well was the ribeye ($21.95), although slightly past my specification of medium-rare, it had been slicked in a ginger demi-glace and sided by just-steamed baby carrots.
The grilled king salmon ($14.95) also was a tad overdone, but still a good piece of fish, and although the mint chutney was an odd choice, it was good as chutneys go, and the Szechuan green beans were fresh and had a bite to them.
Dessert was more of the same, with green tea ice cream ($3.95) so bland it tasted like milk and a rich, icing-slicked chocolate cake ($5.95), so good that a glass of milk wouldn’t have been a bad idea. But the latter is an odd finale for an Asian eatery.
Would the real Sushi Hai please stand up?
Dining critic Kyle Wagner can be reached at 303-820-1958 or kwagner@denverpost.com.
Sushi Hai
**½
JAPANESE|3600 W. 32nd Ave., 720-855-0888
Atmosphere: The casual, edamame-green street level space is cheerful and bright, with a sushi bar and tables. The middle level holds a more upscale space, with a private room for up to 8, while the lowest level is a hip bar, with a stone floor and well-cushioned, pillow-lined seating.
Service: Varies from indifferent on the street level to perky efficiency and intense on the middle to steady bartending on the lowest level.
Wine list: Fine, but sake really should be the drink of choice here. Try the flights.
Dinner entrees: $10-$25
Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 4:30 to 10:30 Monday-Thursday; 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 4:30 to midnight Friday-Saturday; 5 to 10:30 p.m. Sunday.
Details: All major credit cards; street parking; medium noisy; no smoking; wheelchair accessible street level only; reservations for 4 or more only.
Three visits
