Sai Cafe

Alvin and I are currently in the middle of our quest to visit all of our favorite restaurants before leaving Chicago in a week. There's not enough time to go to all the ones we wanted to go to, but haven't, in addition to all of our favorites, so we're just doing our favorites. We went to Greek Islands before our first move, and tonight we went for sushi at Sai Cafe.

The first time we went to Sai Cafe together was December of 1L. Alvin had been there before, I think, with his frisbee teammates. It was that December night that I was formally introduced to the spicy white tuna crunch roll. And every time we've gone there after that, we've had a spicy white tuna crunch roll. Or more than one, actually.

Sai is probably the sushi place we've been to most often in Chicago. We've tried some other places: Tokyo Marina (not bad, but not a huge selection), Kamehachi (good and close to our apartment, but didn't try it until later), Katsu (amazing, but expensive, but I highly recommend it), Naniwa (good, more expensive). There's a lot of other good places too, but we've never tried any of them. I wanted to try Ginza, in walking distance near the old Tokyo Hotel, which despite the appearance of the upper floors of the building, is actually supposed to be pretty good. But we never got there.

I love sushi. I especially love really good rolls. Tonight we had 7 (the pieces are a little smaller in size than the place I go to on SI where we order less): 2 spicy white tuna crunch rolls, 2 negi hamachi, dragon roll, salmon & avocado, and spider roll. It was so yummy.

I tried to eat each piece as slowly as I could to savor the taste. This is probably the last time we'll go to Sai for awhile. The last time we were there was a few months ago, as we've mostly gone to Kamehachi since it's closer, but I'll definitely miss it. It was my first Chicago sushi and probably my last during my 3 year term here. And it's got that really, really good spicy white tuna crunch roll!