Salad

There’s no messing around and covering up the fact that you’re eating raw fish when it comes to Sapporo Japanese & Sushi Restaurant’s Poki Salad ($16.99). They lay it all on the line with bite-sized, yet substantial chunks of tuna, white tuna, and salmon. The cold, fresh fish trifecta is tossed amongst iceberg lettuce, avocado, cucumbers, and radish sprouts. Lightly glazing it all is a citrus-based Ponzu sauce consisting of rice wine vinegar, lemon, and chili pepper. (Don’t worry; the chilies add no heat to this dish whatsoever, just flavor.) Sapporo’s Poki Salad is garnished with sushi rice that includes light rice vinegar and seaweed sprinkles along with pickled ginger and wasabi as condiment garnishes.



 Every bite is clean, savory and rewarding. Textures collide with soft fish and crispy lettuce while chewy rice subsides along the sidelines, existing in every couple of my bites. As for the fish-veggie ratio, it looks something like 80-20. Yep, tons of fish, and just enough veggies.



[Sapporo Japanese & Sushi Restaurant, 4803 Pacific Hwy. E., Fife, 253.922.5656]

Pho 38th

Knowing that at Pho 38th I could spice up any dish with a spice rating of either “S” for “spicy” or “SS” for “super spicy” made deciding on what dish to get incredibly difficult. In order to dumb down my decision-making process I opted for a dish that already had the word “spicy” in the title: Spicy Chicken with salad and rice. Forget the fancy names, Pho 38th labels their food like it is. Absolutely no guessing what this dish is made of, and boy do I like it simple like that.



The Spicy Chicken with salad and rice tasted exactly how I would imagine a regular, everyday teriyaki dish from the mall would taste, except this time loaded with red chili sauce. No surprise here. The red chili sauce tasted peppery, fiery, and danced slightly upon what little taste buds I have left after many years of pepper indulgence. The freshness and quality of this dish was way above par, but the spice factor simply was not there for me.



Next time I wonder if they’ll let me make it “SSS”. That’s “Super Steph Spicy”, in case you were wondering.



[Pho 38th, 3815 S Steele St # G, Tacoma, 253.475.3700]