Mahzu Sushi and Grill

Mahzu Sushi and Grill. Located on Williston and 34th.

Sushi, Sashimi, and Gainesville do not go well together. There could be a couple of reasons. The main one being that we are not at the intersection of a great fish market required for the sushi places that truly excel. All the same, we're in Gainesville. Not Oklahoma. Decent quality fish is all of 2 hours away at most in either Tampa or Jacksonville. This is no Herculean task. All the same, I get the impression that sushi restaurants here largely just don't get the whole "sushi" thing. Why is that? Well, my working theory is that most of the sushi we see in Gainesville are from people that are not fully trained in it. A lot of the time I think we're seeing restaurants that want to put sushi into their menu, but don't know the effort really required to do it correctly. The better sushi restaurants require their chefs in training to just wash rice for 3 years before moving on to actual construction of the rolls. Does anyone honestly believe that is happening here? Sashimi is no less of a challenge, requiring some of the best knife work in the cooking world. Realistically though, you have an upper bound with sushi and sashimi and that is the quality of ingredients you obtain. High quality ingredients equals better quality sushi and sashimi. It's just that simple. That being said, bad knife work and spotty fish inspection can sink a sushi and sashimi place to a discerning crowd, while no amount of great knife care or fish inspection of a bunch of old and crappy fish will save your place. All the same, there's no reason to half ass just because you aren't working in the Tokyo Fish Market.

So we have an upper bound of ingredients for Gainesville, which, theoretically, should still be moderately high. Have any places in Gainesville lived up to that upper threshhold? Well, no. There's a cost component of bringing in daily fresh fish that would result in very highly priced sushi and sashimi that would likely just not work as a business model here in Gainesville. So we refocus on saying what's the best quality of sushi and sashimi we can get at the more moderate price points we associate with sushi here. The reality is that sushi must be mildly profitable here, or we wouldn't have such a high number of places that seem to provide it. At last count on Archer between 34th and the I-75, you can get Japanese food from 6 places. I'll get to those places eventually, but for now you have to wonder about the addition of one more sushi place in here when nobody seems to get it right. All the same, the addition of a new restaurant, Mahzu Sushi and Grill, at the old Green Plantains location in the Williston Publix shopping center does provide people who live in the Laurels, Campus Lodge, and The Polos a closer place to eat than the various Archer restaurants.

I'll preface by saying that the kind of sushi most Americans are interested in makes no real difference regarding where you go. If you go to a sushi place and order something deep fried and covered in cream cheese, you should probably just go where it's most convenient, and this location is, in fact, very convenient for not insignificant portion of the off campus living in the general area. If you go to sushi to get rolls where you want the fish to be just a tiny bit covered in other bold flavors, it probably won't make much of a difference to you either. A bad sushi place might take a bit longer, and your rice probably won't be as good, but it'll still come out about the same as a good place when dealing with those rolls. This isn't really a knock on any person likes those rolls. It's just the reality of the situation. What's the difference between an 8 oz sirloin steak at one place and an 8 oz sirloin steak at another if you cover it in a completely overpowering BBQ sauce? The theory is about the same here.

My girlfriend and I got to Mahzu at around 8 PM on a Monday, so I was expecting it to be fairly slow, and it was. We chose to sit at the sushi bar, which is what I prefer to do when I go to a Japanese place where I'm expecting to eat sushi. It's a new place, and I'm inherently suspicious of sushi in Gainesville, so I wanted eyes on the fish I was going to be eating for signs of what was to come. Alas, the condensation on the inside of the display and refrigeration section most sushi bars have largely blocked my view. I'd have to wait for the meal to come out before I could pass judgment on the state of the fish. I made some small talk with the sushi chef asking where he trained. New York, he claimed. One of the three cities in the US where you can be assured that if they worked at any kind of decent place, they would have been well trained. Expectation go up a touch at this.

So I looked through the menu deciding what to order and discovered a fairly pleasant surprise. The menu showed that they are dedicated to being a real Japanese place. The inclusion of toro and uni was frankly shocking. Not on the menu were a bunch of pan Asian dishes watering down the idea that they are really dedicated to their purpose of providing good Japanese food. Not unexpected, we see teriyaki, tempura, and udon (a bit more rare) dishes. The real surprising part is the Hibachi section. Americans tend to have a weird approach towards Hibachi where they seem to overlook it unless cooked in front of patrons. Personally, I don't particularly care about that kind of thing as it does always tend to come down to flavor for me. Personally, Hibachi for a large group becomes very difficult as the nature of it means all food is coming out at uneven times, and ideally you want to eat a lot of that stuff right off the grill. Here, the hibachi is done in the kitchen which allows them some better quality control. A solid focus on seafood hibachi bodes well, but they have steak and chicken as well. Further, they have Bento boxes similar to what Ichiban offers. One thing did make me apprehensive though. Seeing deep fried rolls always makes me feel a bit curious as there is, quite literally, no way to do those in keeping with the care and dedication considered in making fresh sushi. I could see this as merely pandering to customers that demand it (and from what I've heard from sushi chefs, it's a pretty common request,) so it's unfair to judge restaurants too harshly for that if they deliver on the good stuff.

Getting the measure of the quality of a sushi place is actually super easy. Here's the things you need to order: their sashimi platter, a simpler style roll, and a simple nigiri. I tend to ask what roll and nigiri they do best, as a sushi chef should not bullshit you and should know what they have fresh and what they do well. If you're a general fan of sushi and sashimi like I am, this isn't that big of a deal, but I do know that some people don't like the taste of certain fish. For those people, try to give the chef a few options and see which one they think is best (the benefit of sitting at the sushi bar though good waiters should be able to give you a good answer too.) Regarding the kitchen area of a Japanese restaurant, you can usually tell the quality of their kitchen by their fish. Chicken and Steak are hard to mess up, so I tend to pass right on by these when I'm trying to gauge quality. Salmon Hibachi was on the menu, and at a good price of $16. The recommended roll was the spicy tuna roll. Their sashimi deluxe seemed to have the best variety for me to try. As sashimi deluxe platters are usually chef choices as well, you can tell a lot about the chef from this dish.

A pleasant surprise was that the sushi chef gave us a free appetizer in the form of a cold squid salad.

The fresh flavors combined with a bit of vinegar and bit of something sweet that I couldn't quite place. It provided an excellent appetizer, and at the price of free, it approaches the null set of value. The squid combined with sweet and sour of the light sauce in a flavorful way. There were a few little extra touches to the squid as you can see, but it's clear the goal is to make the squid the star of the dish, and it did very well. An excellent palate cleanser for the food to come as well.

The spicy tuna roll was $5 and the sashimi platter was $18. Spicy tuna at $5 is a pretty good deal if you can get the tuna scraps they cut off to prepare the sashimi. Usually those little chunks are just as good, and you won't know/care if they're put in the sushi. So...moment of truth:

Is my sashimi glowing blue? Yes.

As you can see, they combined the spicy tuna roll (below) with the sashimi deluxe (above.) If you look at that you can't help but wonder...the fuck? What is all the random stuff doing near my sashimi? Sashimi is known for its simple and tasteful aesthetic. This seemed to go in a different direction. As you can see, the sashimi is on a bed of ice with a blue light underneath. I had to think this was part of the overwrought New York style of preparation. At 20 pieces of sashimi, $18 dollars is pretty much par for the course here in Gainesville in terms of cost. Some places give you more types of fish, but less of each fish. Personally, I prefer this a little better, as a bit more care seems put into it.

The spicy tuna was not very spicy in my opinion, but I tend to find it rarely is (even at good sushi restaurants.) The tuna though, was as it should be. It melted as trimmings from the tuna should. The rice had a good balance of vinegar. It was sticky without being overly sticky, which led to a pretty decent texture of the roll. Probably not the most exquisite spicy tuna I've had, but at 5 dollars it definitely exceeded expectations.

The sashimi was where the rubber met the road for me. There are two ways to tell the quality of fish before biting into it and that is the smell and how it looks. Thankfully, there was no smell, as that bodes really poorly for a sashimi dish. In fact, I think the ice bed for the sashimi was a clever inclusion to keep the fish tasting fresh through the whole meal as opposed to leaving it on a warming plate. You may hear that the best sushi chefs have somewhat cold hands. This was a pretty nifty way to maintain that bright and fresh flavor. If you're not a sashimi person, we have salmon, seared albacore, tuna, tilapia, and white tuna (escarole.) The first thing I'll say is that the cuts were excellent. I've been to other places (Dragonfly) that just mangle their sashimi. These sashimi cuts were superb. We'll go one by one. The Salmon was as good as Salmon in Florida basically can be. Salmon, as an oily fish, sometimes puts people off, but I found this salmon to be far more delicate than what I'm used to in Gainesville, which was the result of its freshness. It is somewhat remarkable being that it was probably sourced from the northeast. The seared albacore is a pretty common type of sashimi where they sear the outside and then cool it. This can be a dubious process for some sushi chefs because if the searing isn't done correctly, you'll either have a cut of fish that won't hold the sear particularly well, or it'll be actually cooked, which kills the raw flavor. This was a pretty nice version of this particular cut of sashimi, and the albacore flavor cut nicely through the sear. The tuna was of the Atlantic bluefin variety, extremely rare here in Gainesville where we normally have the yellowfin. If you have not had bluefin tuna, you are missing out something fierce. The flavor is more robust than the yellowfin variety I've had. Basically imagine the subtle flavors of the yellowfin and take them up a few notches. Granted, if I were in, say, Miami, I'd probably prefer the yellowfin because it would likely be locally sourced, but Gainesville is Gainesville, so if the salmon can withstand it's journey from the NE, apparently the bluefin tuna can as well. The Tilapia was more impressive for its cut than for its flavor. Tilapia tends to be one of the harder fishes to cut as they're pretty tough when raw, so you have to slice them pretty thinly to make work. The Chef did a pretty good job of it, but the flavor just wasn't quite there, likely dulled from the travel. The white tuna (also known as escarole) was excellent. Escarole has a bold flavor, as far as sashimi goes, but it is a delicately textured fish, so you can pretty easily mess it up if you go for the kind of slices the sushi chef was going for (it's not uncommon to see Escarole in larger sashimi chunks because it's delicate nature will hold up better to a larger cut.) The chef, barring the tilapia which should be thinner, was remarkably consistent across all his cuts as you can sort of see in the picture.


As good as the sashimi was (and it was better than the vast majority of what we see in Gainesville,) the hibachi was what I would consider a better value (and I don't even really like hibachi that much.) This whole thing was $16.

2 Salmon Filets? Hell yes.

So we have 4 components going on with this dish, so we gotta cover each one separately. The rice, despite its shape, was actually not very sticky, which was a pleasant surprised. It was pretty well seasoned too. It had a touch of crispiness, which I tend to like in my hibachi rice which means it was likely cooked on the grill and then formed into the shape. That bodes pretty well. The noodles were of a pretty simple variety. They weren't that heavily seasoned though. Mixing with the excess sauce from the salmon did the trick. The veg got the hibachi treatment as well getting cooked and sauced as well. The char was a bit lighter than I prefer when I get hibachi, but all the same, it was still pretty good. The most important part was the salmon though. Cooked a touch on the non skin side, and then largely cooked skin side down gave it a pretty solid flake. It was a touch overcooked from how I prefer it, as I tend to be a fan of the barely cooked salmon, but that tends to be how you get it at hibachi places unfortunately. For a simple, well done, Hibachi style dish, this delivered in a pretty solid way though. It's pretty no frills without egg for the rice and a lack of depth for the noodles, but if you're a hibachi fan, I'd say it gives a pretty good solid dish.

In order to try the nigiri, I returned to the restaurant to try their lunch menu. Their sushi special at ~$10 seemed like a reasonable price if the sushi was of quality with the dinner.

There were actually two more pieces of California Roll, but I ate them. The California roll was basically par for the course as far as California rolls go. The avocado was fresh, which is good, but the crab was of the fake crab stick variety that is the norm. The nigiri was well done. If anything, it was a little heavy on the fish side.

As you can see, the fish is a bit large for the rice underneath. That being said the fish was still fresh and well cut. This nigiri was made with yellow fin tuna instead of the blue fin tuna found in the sashimi (which is pretty common considering it's not just sashimi and is at lunch.) The rice was well done, but had a bit more body to it than is ideal and was a touch light on the vinegar side. All the same, the flavor balance was about right, and the lunch price certainly made it a good value.

In the end, I'd say this is probably one of the best Japanese places in Gainesville with comparative prices and superior quality with regards to most of the products put out by their competitors. Yamato edges the Hibachi in quality, but if you just want the Hibachi without the live show, this is the better option, and you can find roughly equivalent raw product with Ichiban. All the same, these guys actually seem dedicated to what they're making though, and that goes pretty far with me. If the location is more convenient for you than Ichiban or Yamato or you happen to want some of both, I'd say this is definitely the go to Japanese place.