The Japanese beat out the French. Not in the world of politics, but on the plate. Fifty years ago when Americans thought of going out, it was to a high end French restaurant. After all, the French taught the world about restaurants and dining out, mais non? Towns all across the United States had high-end French restaurants. In Charlotte, the French restaurant was in the Mecklenburg Hotel, which once stood on Trade Street in Third Ward.
Gradually other European cuisines edged their way into the big tab market, although Americans still preferred to think of most ethnic restaurants as fast and cheap. Occasionally a Chinese restaurant would drape its tables in linen and serve an aristocratic Peking duck.
But during the 1990s, linen no longer denoted upper-end, nor did French cuisine. Restaurants stripped the tables, French went bistro, and most restaurants wanted a more relaxed yet vibrant atmosphere. The tab was still there, but Americans didn’t require the fanfare any longer.
Also in the ’90s, the clean balanced taste of Japanese cuisine blew across the continent from the West Coast. Previously, Japanese restaurants featured either the gimmicky knife throwing grill master (a la the John Belushi Samurai Chef) or serene rooms where shoeless female servers donned kimonos and bowed obediently to their customers.
Then Asian food came into focus. Did it mater if a Japanese restaurant had a tatami room or the sounds of a shakuhachi flute? Hardly. Americans discovered that sushi went just as well with rock and Red Bull and coke.
No matter where the Asian restaurateurs originate, the resonance of the cash register rings true. This is why in Charlotte we are seeing a new crop of Japanese restaurants opening around town — usually by Americans of Asian descent, but not Japanese or émigrés from throughout Asia.
I watched Hein Le, a native of Vietnam, do the upfit of his newly opened 50-seat Yotto Sushi Japanese Restaurant in the shopping center on Colony and Rea Roads. Le is a mechanical engineer by trade and has lived in Charlotte for 20 years. Why Japanese? He says it’s the best opportunity right now.
On a Friday night the sushi bar was packed with neighbors. Every table was full and to-go bags crowded the cash register area. During the week, Yotto is more laid back, which is what Le had in mind when he named the place. “Yotto means sailboat, a time to relax and enjoy the freshness of the sea,” he says.
With Le in his restaurant is his cousin They Nguyen, whose day job is with a local bank but helps out in the front of the house as she can; and DJ, one of the three sushi chefs.
Le has constructed his menu in similarly familiar Japanese form. The best of the appetizers was the shrimp shumai dumplings packaged in a gossamer thin wrapper. The beef gyoza dumplings, although brown and crunchy, did not hum of beef. Luckily the main entrées at Yotto make up the difference for these little deficiencies. The Uno Don — a bowl of barbecued eel on sticky rice — was downright superior.
After you see a flurry of bountiful bento boxes streaming by, you just have to have one. The chicken teriyaki was a treasure box filled with a straight-up California roll, subtly flavored bites of chicken, pan-fried dumplings, miso soup and the house salad served with the ubiquitous ginger dressing. The greaseless tempura shrimp were strikingly splayed across the white rice while the accompanying crispy vegetables proved inventive nibbles.
Soup is usually the best buy in any Asian shop and Yotto is not exception. The nourishing udon soup is only $7 and is filled with a heavenly scented broth, strips of chicken breast and luscious noodles.
One of the sushi chefs at Yotto came to Charlotte after a stint in a Vegas hotel, thus the distinctive West Coast flavor to the style and preparation of the sushi. The sushi here is not state of the art but rather just bites that taste good and are reasonably priced.
Yotto does not offer the elaborate upmarket ingredients you might find at a more exclusive and expensive Japanese restaurant, the kind with a hushed ambiance. Here if you sit at the bar you can talk to the sushi chef and chat with the folks around you. This is a neighborhood gig and the folks here just want good — not pay through the nose — sushi.
Sure Le could change some things — like the music — but thanks to the confluence of events, a sushi place like Yotto seems to be a restaurant of choice during this fresh millennium, just as the French restaurant was in mid-century. But you can still murmur “bon appétite” before you down your uzura nigiri.
Eater’s Digest
Thursday, Feb. 22 at 6 p.m., the Levine Museum of the New South will look at the religious traditions and the cuisine of the Middle East in “Children of Abraham and the Birth of God” with Dr. Jonathan Berkey, Professor of History at Davidson College. I will discuss Middle Eastern cuisine. The cost is $25 for museum members; $30 for non-members and includes a Middle Eastern dinner. 704.333.1887 ext. 501. See you there.
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This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2007.
