So we received some good news at the Outsider yesterday (can’t reveal what that is yet) and decided to celebrate with sushi. Maiko is close to our usual watering holes, so we decided to pay it a visit. I realize that Maiko isn’t one of the “cool” sushi places to go to these days, but our last experience there was pretty outstanding. That wouldn’t prove to be the case this time.

Since my best friend is Japanese, I have spent lots of time in various Asian restaurants - some of them pretty shady (but delicious). Because of this friend, I have learned a very important - albeit, possibly racist - lesson. If you’re going out for Asian food, you don’t want to see too many white people working at the restaurant. You can send me hate-mail, but trust me on this.

As I mentioned, our previous visit to Maiko was pretty great, helped immensely by the fact that we had an outstanding - and Japanese - waiter. One member of our party has a severe allergy to shellfish. This makes ordering sushi tricky. Our previous waiter was able to suggest lots of solutions, including the popular standby - substituting imitation crab. He was also able to improvise some wonderful non-fish rolls for a vegetarian member of our dining party. (One of these improvisations included tempura fried sweet potato at the center of a delicious sushi roll).

In contrast to our pleasant first experience, yesterday’s trip to Maiko was like night and day. Our waiter was nowhere to be seen, but when he did show up - he was terrible. We are the type of group that likes to order lots of drinks (alcoholics). If our combined bar bill doesn’t hit at least $100 then there is something wrong. Last night’s combined alcohol intake was 3 Sapporo’s. Mainly because we couldn’t get our drinks refilled.

When we informed our waiter of the shellfish allergy - he told us they couldn’t substitute imitation Krab for the real stuff. “But we had it done before,” we implored.

“Sorry, but it’s already mixed,” was his reply.

“Mixed?”

“Yeah, it’s already mixed in with the real crab. The real crab is too expensive to serve by itself, so we mix it in with the imitation krab.”

What the fuck? “So even when I think I’m ordering real crab, I’m getting a bunch of fake krab,too?”

“Yep”

“And you don’t have any fake krab left that we could substitute in this Fahrenheit roll?”

“No. It’s already been mixed.”

So we adjusted our order accordingly, but I definitely wasn’t about to waste cash on any of the items that purported to feature “real” crab. We settled on an appetizer of edamame and gyoza. For rolls, we ordered Maiko Rolls, some kind of spicy tuna roll whose name escapes me, an order of hamachi and a Fahrenheit roll - on a separate plate to keep the shellfish contamination to a minimum. Our vegetarian friend ordered a a vegetarian roll and a repeat of the delicious tempura sweet potato roll.

“We can’t do just sweet potato, but we can do tempura vegetables,” said the server.

“Okay, whatever,” answered our easy-going non-carnivorous friend.

Appetizers arrived. Edamame is edamame, I don’t need to describe that for you. The pork and vegetable stuffed gyoza was delicious. These are dumplings in case you’re thrown off by the lingo.

About thirty minutes after polishing off the appetizers, our main course arrives. As requested, the shellfish was kept quarantined to its own plate. Everything else looked good, except for the tempura sweet potato rolls which had been replaced by a heaping basket of ugly tempura fried vegetables. By the time we had a chance to realize what was going on, our waiter had once again disappeared.

We dug into the rest of it and it was all fairly excellent. The Fahrenheit rolls were way too pepper-y, which obscured the taste of any fish and crab/krab mixture that may have been in the rolls. I have to say that the Maiko rolls are just brilliant. They combine salmon, yellow tail and mango and are wrapped in green soy bean paper. The spicy tuna roll was excellent as well. The hamachi was decent, but definitely wasn’t the catch of the day.

Our vegetarian friend was eventually able to exchange her basket of batter for a plate of tempura sweet potato rolls which weren’t as good as last time - probably because according to the waiter they were just going to slice up the tempura that she had already been served and use that to make the rolls. This resulted in a combination that was less crispy than desired.

It was a pretty disappointing experience that didn’t feel like it was worth over $90 - especially when we had been jonesing for sushi for so long. There wasn’t really anything seriously wrong enough to complain to a manager about. It was just the complete lack of effort, care and knowledge that our server put into our dining experience.

I really want to love Maiko, because I like the environment and I love the Maiko rolls, but this did not to satisfying our need for a sushi fix, so if you have any good advice on sushi joints we should try, please take advantage of our comments feature to let us know. We are not scared of shady out-of-the-way locations that tourists and hipsters never go. Are there any hidden treasures in the central austin sushi scene?

Maiko
311 6th St W
Austin, TX 78701
(512) 236-9888