Eating the Road: Austin’s Uchiko, from Chef Tyson Cole, Named to GQ’s Top Ten Best List
Uchiko's grilled squid (foto GQ)
James Beard Award-winning dining writer Alan Richman crisscrossed the country from Brooklyn to Austin to Seattle in search of the best new restaurants for his annual roundup for GQ Magazine, where Richman is the dining correspondent. In the January issue of GQ Magazine (on stands 12.21), Richman names Austin’s Uchiko as #7 on the list. Here’s his top ten:
Lincoln – New York, NY
Flour + Water – San Francisco, CA
The Kitchen at Brooklyn Fare – Brooklyn, NY
The Tasting Kitchen – Venice, CA
Grüner– Portland, OR
The Walrus and the Carpenter – Seattle, WA
Uchiko – Austin, TX
Menton – Boston, MA
Commis – Oakland, CA
Longman & Eagle – Chicago, IL
Uchiko is the sister resto to chef Tyson Cole’s other Austin sushi place, Uchi. I’ve eaten Cole’s creations several times. His fusion of global flavors is amazing. creative and inspired, precise without pretension.
Here’s what Richman wrote about chef Tyson Cole’s food at Uchiko:
The Americanization of Japanese food has rarely been so appealing. (Nobu Matsuhisa invented the concept more than twenty years ago, though his unsurpassed style was more traditional and somewhat South American.) The sushi chefs standing before me spoke English to one another, maybe because one was Thai, the other Vietnamese. The Thai guy said to me, “The chef, Tyson Cole, he’s a white guy.” My sushi waitress was straight out of the University of Florida. I started with brilliant watermelon sashimi—watermelon and maguro (red tuna) look alike. The fruit came thinly sliced, with spices, herbs, and sea salt. Even more wonderful was Hama Chili, hama being slang for yellowtail, or hamachi. The raw fish came in an orange-oil ponzu sauce, with Thai chilies and skinless, pitless orange slices. Hard to imagine fish being this refreshing. The sushi toppings were distinctive and daring: flounder topped with candied quinoa; hamachi with jalapeños; Alaska weathervane scallops—a variation on farm-raised—with lime, salt, and pepper. Cooked food was impressive, too. Grilled mackerel was paired with huckleberry coulis, onions, and bluefoot mushrooms, all powerful enough to tame one of the strongest-tasting fish. Although a bottle of soy sauce sat on the counter, the combinations were so vivid I wasn’t tempted to add a drop.
Want to know more? Here’s the link to Richman’s review and list.
Thoughts?