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The Rice Thresher
6100 Main Street (MS-524)
Houston, TX 77005-1892

Yan Sushi, located on the corner of Holcombe and Greenbriar, is sushi's answer to McDonalds. The establishment is a small cube-like shack with a drive-thru in the middle of a large parking lot. Inside, the restaurant is incredibly cramped, squashing a large sushi bar and a few plastic tables into a space about the size of a typical two-person dorm room. While we enjoyed the mint green paint, the decor evoked the feel of a late 1980s run-down diner.

Though trashy, Yan Sushi is still significantly more stylish than Arby's. The restaurant was populated by an eclectic crowd: A Japanese couple sat adjacent to a pair of suited yuppies and a woman with enormous hair. All seemed to be enjoying the various foodstuffs either on traditional wooden Japanese blocks or traditional plastic cafeteria trays.

In addition to the obligatory raw fish, the menu offers a variety of cooked dishes, including tempura, noodle soups and various meats prepared teriyaki style (in a sweet honey sauce). If meat isn't your thing, they also have a plethora of maki rolls (seaweed wrapped around rice) containing vegetables. The squashi-squashi rolls looked especially yummy.

We ordered tuna sushi, tuna roll tekamaki, eel sushi and a spider roll maki (real deep-fried crab, some kind of fish or squid eggs and a spicy mayonnaise rolled in rice and seaweed).

We were both entranced watching the sushi chef quickly prepare our sushi and rolls.

For the sushi, he deftly molded the rice in the palm of his hand into a perfect ellipse before slapping on the fish. The fish was all sliced fresh before our eyes, and we noticed that the chef was even so kind as to throw out the dried out butt of the fish fillet, much as one throws out the end of a loaf of supermarket bread. Many cheap sushi places such as Yan Sushi would have been content to serve us the butt.

Clearly, the chef's 33 years of experience (according to the take-out menu) have paid off. We were, however, mildly disturbed to notice that the chef dipped his fingers and knife into a small bowl of water between preparing pieces of sushi. During the 15 minutes we were there, we never saw the water changed, and it grew somewhat pasty-looking as time wore on. It just looked like an Food and Drug Administration nightmare.

Six minutes later, the sushi was presented to us in somewhat unattractive white styrofoam boxes containing the obligatory wasabi (hot green radish paste) and pickled ginger. To our surprise, the maki was quite large and hearty, with a diameter comparable to a cooked bratwurst, and the spider role was even larger. At two dollars for six pieces of maki, this proves to be the ultimate sushi bargain.

Ahh, but how does it taste? Pretty good actually. The tuna was unusually fresh, firm, with a pleasant buttery texture, and it contained none of the strange sinewy fish bits which lurk in most low-end sushi. It was also quite tasty, soaring in flavor above the styrofoam container it came in (though with enough soy and wasabi, the box started to taste pretty good too).

The spider role succeeded as well, balancing crispy crab legs with an appropriately spiced mayonnaise. The only complaint was that the rice was lacking in vinegar, a malady which could easily be overcome with condiments. If the rice had been properly vinegared, the sushi would gain a star and be comparable to Miyako's in flavor if not presentation.

For the price though, it provides reasonably good sushi, and being only a fish's throw away from campus, it is a deal you can't shake a salmon at.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the September 19, 1997 issue.