Broward Dining: How Do You Roll?

How Do You Roll @ Sawgrass Landing
13775 W. Sunrise Blvd.
Sunrise, Florida 33323

Web Site: http://www.howdoyouroll.com

Twitter: @how_do_you_roll

Quick Serve Restaurants, or QSR’s, are all the rage right now in casual dining. The trend of serving “faster, but higher quality” food items than what is served fast food establishments can largely be attributed to Chipotle, which is now a huge success story in the food and restaurant industry.

Since Chipotle made it big, others are trying to figure out what the next big QSR concept is. A lot of stuff since has been various re-spins on the burger concept. Asian cuisine, particularly sushi, is not something QSR as a whole has attempted to tackle yet, due to much higher sanitary standards as well as issues of keeping fish fresh.

How Do You Roll, a QSR chain that originated in Texas (and was profiled on the TV show “Shark Tank“)  is attempting to recreate Chipotle’s “Roll your own” model and success but with sushi and other Asian items. There are currently two locations in Florida, one in Sunrise and the other in Gainesville.

Rachel and I had the opportunity to visit the Sunrise HDYR location on a torrentially rainy saturday night with a group of sushi fans from Meetup.com when business was slow, so we got a chance to observe the franchise under optimal conditions for photography but not necessarily to see how service would perform under busy conditions.

As I mentioned, HDYR is a “Roll your own”, QSR restaurant where you pick from a list of ingredients and the sushi chefs put together your custom sushi roll, rice bowl or ramen soup.

HDYR is most definitely a “beginners” sushi place because there are only 3 raw fish types you can choose from, Tuna (Maguro), Salmon, Escolar (a bland white fish, sometimes referred to as “White Tuna”), and “Spicy” variants of the same. Additional proteins that can be rolled are cooked Beef, Chicken, Crawfish Tails, Surimi (“Krab Sticks”), Shrimp, Eel and Tofu.

There is also a nice variety of fruits, vegetables and a number of different sauces and toppings/condiments which allows for a good combination of things for the diner to create. Pre-designed roll combinations range from $3 to $7, so you’re looking at about half of what a mid-range sushi restaurant charges for similar items.

Like at a Chipotle, or a sub shop chain, you order at the counter and they give you a number and you sit down. When your number is called you either go up to get your order, or depending how busy the place is, they bring it to you. The place was so completely dead that evening due to the weather that we got first class table service.

Is How Do You Roll a fresh or a dead fish? Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Florida Dining: Zuma

Zuma
270 Biscayne Boulevard Way
Miami, FL (Located in the Epic Hotel)
(305) 577-0277

Web Site: http://www.zumarestaurant.com/zuma-landing/miami/en/welcome

Since I’ve moved down to South Florida I have been concentrating more on the “ethnic eats” rather than the fine dining aspect of food blogging. But as I’ve been having more and more business meetings in Miami, I’m starting to get exposed more towards the high-end cuisine offerings here.

I recently had the opportunity to dine at Zuma, which bills itself as “modern Japanese”. Zuma is part of the Azumi restaurant group, which has branches of Zuma in different parts of the world, including London, Hong Hong, Istanbul, Dubai, Miami and Bangkok.

My understanding is that the original Zuma restaurant in London was a partnership of two very wealthy Indian businessmen who had dined at the London branch of Nobu and decided that they could create a similar concept restaurant on their own. Certainly Zuma is very “Nobu-esque” in its menu format (including the miso black cod that every high-end Japanese restaurant seems to copy from Nobu these days) and also overall presentation.

I will also state I have no idea what anything at this restaurant costs. I was treated to lunch here by a very generous client, and I never saw any prices because I never looked at the menu, someone else did the ordering, and the online menu has no prices either. So if your interest is piqued in dining here, just take that into consideration.

The bar area of the Miami outpost of Zuma. This is one of the few dining room photos I was able to take, as the management got quite annoyed with me after observing me just taking a few casual shots of the general dining area and told me to put my camera away.

Nobu too rich for your blood? Well, so is this. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

No Sushi for You!

And no, I’m not telling you where this place is. He doesn’t want any more business.

NJ Dining: Sushi Cruise

Sushi Cruise
The Marketplace Shopping Center
725 River Road, Edgewater NJ
(201)313-3611

Web Site: http://www.sushi-cruise.com

Click here for a short Sushi Cruise video.

I’ve said in the past that I’m a big fan of instant gratification. Kaiten (carousel) sushi, while popular in Japan, hasn’t taken off like one would think it would in the US yet, at least on the East Coast. Sushi Cruise, a new Kaiten-style sushi restaurant which just opened in the Marketplace Shopping Center in Edgewater (which also houses Su, the new vegetarian Asian Fusion restaurant) is one of only a few such places in North Jersey and New York City, which include East restaurant in Teaneck, which has been serving that style of sushi for about seven years now since its last renovation in 2001.

Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.