Sushi Seki Chelsea- Close to Sek-tacular, but not definitely not Sushi Sucki

Sushi Seki’s original UESish location is very close to Boyfriend’s place, which is awesome except that Boyfriend doesn’t eat sushi.  I eat sushi; I  eat sushi quite frequently. I enjoy eating sushi solo sometimes (say that ten times fast), but often don’t feel like making too much of a trek for a dinner alone (lunch is another story), and when I am craving the good stuff, the really good stuff, I usually see if 15 East can take me (recently they can’t), or else I will try to pretend that I like Kanoyama more than I do because they deliver.  Anyway, I was really excited when Sushi Seki opened in Chelsea because it filled a fancy sushi void in my area, with more sushi bar seating than Momoya and a crave-worthy omakase. Since Seki is a former chef from Sushi of Gari, many of Gari’s signature pieces (salmon tomato, my fave, tuna tofu, etc) are Seki signatures as well. The prices will seem vaguely familiar as well, deja dollars.

Although I had an enjoyable meal, my overall impression of Sushi Seki is that the chefs were on auto-pilot; they clearly have their famous pieces  that are served as the omakase, but it literally just seemed like they were ticking a list of items to serve.  Some of these pieces were excellent, even if I am more familiar with their Gari incarnations, and some of them simply fell flat.  The fried oysters were greasy, and really had no interplay with the rice and nori on top of which they were served; there was no binding element to make this piece exceptional and I preferred to just eat the oysters without the rice and seaweed.  The yellow tail with jalapeno sauce had good bite and was not overpowered by the spice, and the squid piece was also surprisingly delicious. The omakase is a decent amount of food, but this crazy girl needed additional pieces of uni at the end, which were done perfectly.  The official end of the omakase is marked by the arrival of a spicy scallop-hand roll, a crave worthy dish at Sushi of Gari that we wait for like dogs wagging their tails; the Seki version was undone by over-greasy crunchies in the roll, totally distracting and disrupting to the delicate balance of fish, sauce and extras. Could have just been an off-batch, not a deal breaker.

I have managed to avoid getting addicted to the original Sushi Seki (mainly due to the non-sushi-eating partner), but  this branch is batting its eyelashes at me in a way that is tempting me to make a habit out of it. Thankfully, there are the prices to prohibit that…