A great way to wrap up a rainy Saturday (or, on following Darren's advice...)

Blah... Another rainy Saturday, so we were inside most of the day. I was going to cook those chicken breasts in the fridge, but frankly, there's some cabin fever building just a bit... And I really don't handle cabin fever that well. So I made the executive decision that we would go out for some dinner. But to avoid the appearance of being a total dictator, I asked my wife if she'd like to go anywhere in particular. She responded with "sushi," and I happened to remember Darren's post about a new sushi place. I double-checked the post on this here blog and then we headed up Hulen to Sushi Axiom.

When we first walked in, we were concerned that we were underdressed in shorts and polo shirts, but then we saw other folks dressed casually. But the decor is really nice. Lots of dark surfaces with natural woods and water elements. The bar is gorgeous. My wife even commented that it looked a little like the decor of the Dallas Nobu.

We decided to sit at the sushi bar because I enjoy watching the sushi chefs do their work. But at Sushi Axiom, the stools aren't really tall enough to let you see well over the refrigerated cases lining the bar, so that was a little disappointing.

We didn't look much at the regular menu since we were there with sushi on our minds. We did pause long enough at the appetizers to see they had vegetable tempura, so we got an order of that. Looking at the signature rolls menu, we saw one called Scallop Dynamite that had scallops and crab and other good stuff, so I wrote it down. We also ordered the California, salmon skin, and shrimp tempura rolls. And as if that wasn't enough to feed a small army, I got a tamago (sweet egg) for myself...

The vegetable tempura came out first, and it was pretty standard tempura. While we were working on that, the sushi chefs passed over a plate with the California and shrimp tempura rolls, and they were good too. The California rolls didn't have the big glob of avocado that many places seem to go with -- I'm here for the crab, not the 'cado...

The Scallop Dynamite came next, and it was rich. The bottom layer was a roll made with crab and cream cheese. On top was a creamy sauce with scallops and roe. So it was a pretty messy proposition to eat this thing, especially if your chopstick skills are questionable. The flavor was good, with a sweet flavor at first, developing into a bit of heat at the end of the bite. While this was good, we were both tired of it by the end of the meal.

The salmon skin roll was good, but the skin wasn't as crispy as I would've liked. I've had this other places where the salmon skin was a bit crunchier and still had remnants of the salmon flesh attached. I don't know which is the proper method, but I vote for the crispy version.

So yeah, Darren was right, as I suspected he would be. Sushi Axiom is a good local spot, and it's a pretty romantic place for a date. For the record, we watched West Wing afterwards, rather than Veronica Mars, so we didn't follow Darren's advice entirely...