2.5 stars for Katsuya on South Beach

2.5 stars for Katsuya on South Beach

Katsuya’s reservation number is a good one to keep in your little black smart phone. Especially during winter months when friends from points north start calling. Like it’s older sister in L.A., it’s a scene restaurant. If you arrive early — anytime before, say, 8pm — you might wonder why you are seated inches from the only other diners. But, by 10, you realize you are in a club and that the Hungarian models next to you are wearing too much perfume. The well-kept doyenne seated on the cozy banquet to your right comes here once a week with her banker husband and always orders the same thing. You are that close.

The cocktail menu is filled with fun, tropical drinks but no prices. Katsuya is for those who don’t have to ask. It’s not all about the food. What other restaurant do you know that includes the designer’s name—here the talented French fashion icon Philippe Starck — in its moniker? But it’s not that the food is bad. While derivative, the six-page menu by Japanese master sushi chef Katsuya Uechi has some delicious offerings, though navigating it can be tough because the model-handsome staff isn’t particularly articulate on the subject.

Katsuya is like a Japanese reincarnation of China Grill, delivering a pricey, fast-paced meal better fueled with fruity cocktails than fine wine. It’s plenty of fun. The food is pretty good. There is no velvet rope. And you don’t have to pay a cover.

Ambience: The restaurant is as stunning as the young, hip crowd it attracts. Tucked beyond the double dining rooms of the Bazaar and through the lobby of the SLS Hotel, it’s almost like a speakeasy hidden to the left of a bustling patio bar. Inside, the gallery-like walls are ringed with deco molding and hazy, neon lighting. Outsized artwork includes a sexy geisha with glossy red lips who oversees an open kitchen where sushi chefs slice colorful creations.

What Worked

• Fabulously crunchy Chinese chicken salad made famous by Wolfgang Puck three decades ago
• Nobu’s irresistible deep-fried rock shrimp in spicy mayonnaise.
• Crispy rice topped with a zingy tuna tartar that can be found locally at Makoto
• Glisteningly fresh and pristine salmon, yellowtail, halibut, shrimp & eel
• Simple yellowtail lozenges enhanced with a splash citrusy ponzu sauce and a dime-size slice of mild jalapeño pepper
• Perky robata shrimp grilled four to a skewer with a sliver of lemon
• Fresh & tender Stripped Baze (but not spicy enough for a dish described as “Szechuan style”)

What Didn't Work

• Tskune shrimp balls (bite-size chicken meatballs) that made it onto the bill, but not the table
• Spotty service - at one point, someone else’s plate landed on our table, but before we could raise our fork to alert a server, a busboy did a pirouette and pulled it away without an “Excuse me”
• Heavily battered tempura vegetables
• Panko-fried chicken roll stuffed with asparagus and other stir-fried vegetables that were drier than chicken fingers from a school cafeteria
• The miso-glazed cod is so sticky-sweet that it overwhelmed the velvety fish