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disclaimer » warning: this review contains personal comments and the experiences of the writer. Content may or not be valuable to you or even what you would put in a review.
In the search for a Japanese sushi place near central Columbus we were directed to Kooma. A small place across from the North Market.
We arrived around 7:00 and were promptly seated in a mostly full place. On the way in we passed a DJ hunched over two turntables who seemed to be crammed into the spot where a coat rack belonged.
They placed us in the back booth which was good for viewing the entire place. After getting the menus we ordered green tea (love the earthy taste of good green tea). The waitress said there were some special rolls. Instead of telling us what they were she announced that we would most likely not remember them because they had so many ingredients and left us with a list of special rolls scrawled upon a dirty scrap of paper.
The menu had various dishes from Korean to Japanese to American, but since we came for the sushi, we ordered the special, which included the Kooma roll and a few custom rolls. (Although the waitress may have felt our memory was not good enough to remember three rolls, her handwriting was worse and we could not make out all the words on the specials.)
Our green tea arrived in two cups of fairly warm water with tea bags floating on the top. While we waited for the sushi we looked around. The place was mostly filled with young couples except for one table of four women. The music was the standard background mix that I had heard about 10 years ago in a hair salon. (For a place that claimed to have a mix of good food and music, we hoped the food would be fresher.)
The food arrived about 20 minutes later and was presented nicely on custom plates. The sushi was unremarkable. In some cases it was obvious that the fish had fallen below freezing temperature (a hard feat not to avoid in the middle of the US.) The Kooma roll was completely fair, which was surprising for a signature roll. We found the mysteriously named Rocky #2 roll to be the best of the bunch. It had a nice sauce which seemed to be a combination of lemon zest, ponzu and jalapeno.
[tangent:] A small pet peeve of mine is having my chop stick rest whisked away as trash. After removing the wrapper of the chop sticks I fold it into a neat little tent to rest my chop sticks on so as not to just drop them on the table. My skill in this is immature at best. I remember in Tokyo how the young ladies I used to eat with could take that discarded piece of paper and effortless fold it into various animals and items. Much like the detective in Blade Runner [/tangent :]
The food was fair, at best. The music old and would be best replaced with a few CDs of popular Japanese music. Even Yumi Matsutoya J-Pop would be an improvement. The decorating OK, but I still felt like the bottom level of a parking garage. And what is with the zebra, rhino and lion heads on the walls? The food was nicely presented but unremarkable and decidedly not fresh. The service was poor.
I'd give it a 2 out of 5
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