Haiku Japanese Bistro

You know that feeling when you taste something so delicious that your eyes roll to the back of your head, you take a really long time to chew, and you savor every last bite?  It goes way beyond a normal meal where you are just satisfied that it tastes good and is providing sustenance to your body.  What I'm talking about is an experience.  Fireworks.  It's primal, it's powerful, it's perfect.  For me this happens when I eat ribs, Edgerton Rolls (see blog post on 1/13/14), a perfect champagne mango, or a perfect peach.  The food is so amazing, it's like a drug.  Apparently now I can add sushi to the list of mind blowing good food.  It makes sense.  Sushi is in itself an art form - visually beautiful, hand crafted, creative in its flavor and texture combinations.  Not just any sushi though.  Last night I had the best sushi of my life.   

Enter Haiku in Mendota Heights, MN.  My coworker had a groupon deal and decided to invite me and another coworker of ours since he knows how much we like sushi.  Of course I'm not going to turn down a sushi outing.  Haiku is not all that impressive when you walk up to it.  It's in a strip mall, after all.  I will admit, I had immediate concerns about eating sushi from restaurant in a strip mall.  Sketch.  Anyway, when we walked inside, my mood instantly changed.  The sushi bar is beautiful.  Behind it is the alcohol bar.  The lights are dimmed and the restaurant is decorated in a very modern way.  Maybe they chose cheaper rent so they could spend more money on sushi ingredients?

We ordered the obligatory edamame and tempura appetizers.  They were really good as always.  We chose sweet potato tempura which was new for me.  On to the main event.  We ordered four rolls.  They were all phenomenal.  Hands down, our favorite was the Powerful Roll.  Get this:  the roll was wrapped in filet mignon.  Oh my goodness.  The way the warm beef melded with the sauce, shrimp tempura, and rice was just perfection.  Usually sushi is served cold, but our rolls were on the warmer side.  Definitely enhances the flavor.  We also had a lobster roll wrapped in mango, and two other rolls.  As I said my eyes were rolled to the back of my head the whole time, and I was quite distracted savoring every bite that I forgot to write down details for a descriptive blog post.  My apologies.  You'll just have to go check it out for yourself.

Of course we ended the meal with dessert.  We all shared the mango cheese cake, key lime pie, and chocolate fudge cake.  Each dessert was also served with a scoop of ice cream - mango, vanilla, and green tea.  Those were delicious as well. 

We were still talking about how amazing the sushi was today at work.  We are going to have to keep ourselves in check and not go there every week for lunch.  I've had sushi at several restaurants, but for me, this went above and beyond and was truly epic.