“Two more people?” our hostess repeated, eyeing our table of seven.
“Two,” we confirmed, and with just one look around Genki Ya, we could understand her surprise.
The Japanese sushi restaurant had no more than 10 tables with little space in between. The effect, however, was not one of cramped claustrophobia and deafening noise although the restaurant stayed full the whole time we were there.
The interior decor, in combination with the food, made for an intimate, cozy experience, and conversation flowed easily and naturally at our table.
Curvature was a theme throughout the restaurant’s interior, from the simple vases decorating the room to the waves of seafoam green that lined the walls. Green bamboo stalks laid across the front window obstructed our view of Harvard Street, creating a sense of seclusion in nature.
Inside, the restaurant’s mellow yet bubbly atmosphere merged the tranquility of traditional Japanese aesthetics with the colorful energy of anime, like in the films of Hayao Miyazaki.
We started off our meal with seaweed salad, a humble ball of fresh, thin seaweed strips. The salad won over everybody’s taste buds after the first bite with its exceptionally refreshing flavor and cool but not slimy texture.
The service was fast, most of our entrees arriving soon after we ordered. The delay of some dishes was promptly forgiven when we realized our sushi was freshly made by the chefs behind the sushi bar.
The creative menu continued to surprise us with dishes like the mushroom tempura roll, which was the first hot sushi dish most of us had ever encountered. The una-ju, featuring three strips of melt-in-your-mouth eel on top of a bed of white rice, complete with the iconic Japanese bento box, brought with it a small dish of bright yellow Asian pickles, which confused the group until the waiter explained what it was.
The alligator roll, a sushi made of eel, avocado, cucumbers, crab sticks and flying roe on top of shrimp tempura rolls, presented a nice contrast between the softness of the eel and the crunchy tempura.
The mild but refreshing flavor of avocado balanced the eel’s sweet barbeque flavor. Fittingly, it was served on a long and narrow plate, the big rolls making a straight line as if the dish was an actual alligator.
The hawaiian roll offered a tropical combination of mango, banana, avocado, cucumber, sweet potato tempura and cream cheese—as cool and fruity as a smoothie on a summer day.
Although the check elicited a few cringes (even if nine hungry high schoolers had eaten to their hearts’ content), Genki Ya was generally a success.
The variety of choices and colorful palette of tastes made for excited chatter as each round of dishes was brought to our table. The creativity of the food and the occasional delicious surprises made everyone eager to try a little bit of everything.
At the end of the night, we squeezed our way out the still-crowded restaurant feeling, as the name of the restaurant had promised us, very “genki”—healthy, strong, and energetic.
