Meet The Eight Sushi Masters It requires stringent quality, the best ingredients and a deep respect and appreciation for Japanese tradition and sushi mastery.  We introduce you to the Eight Sushi Masters– The culinary experts, service providers and respected restaurant family who stand behind every dish, drink and experience at Eight Sushi Lounge.   Each has earned respect for their individual knowledge and skill.  Each serves a unique role in sourcing ingredients, menu development, preparation techniques, artful presentation, friendly and flawless service. Layer them together like the different tastes, textures and presentations of the best sushi, and you have our recipe for Japanese cuisine that involves all of the senses. As a sushi chef trained under the guidance of Japanese sushi master Gen San of Tokyo, Handy Ho who’s also a Georgia State University graduate, sets the culinary vision for Eight Sushi Lounge.   He has been executive chef at Rice Restaurant and Sushi Bar for 10 years, as well as chef at Geisha House Hollywood and Geisha House Atlanta, and is Sake Master Certified.  

Handy continues to hone his craft through such activities as a global culinary tour where he gathered inspiring new ideas. Handy’s sushi preparation philosophy is centered on the belief that cut, taste and presentation are integral to flavor.  His formula for success includes having the highest quality fish, the right blade on the knife, perfect rice and the correct brush of sauce or other enhancement.  Only when this all comes together can a dish be presented to Eight Sushi diners, delivering a state-of-the-art sushi experience. Lei G. Ho (Lily) If one could graduate Summa Cum Laude from California’s Sushi Academy, then Eight Sushi Lounge president Lei G Ho, known as Lily, would certainly have earned the honor when she completed the prestigious program in 2003. Lily is one of the first women in Georgia to be officially trained as a sushi chef. Her passion for sushi, along with her 20 plus years as a restaurateur, shows in every dish. She’s mom to three kids, two of whom, Windy and Handy, are part of the Eight Sushi Lounge team.

Lily sees family as a metaphor for the kind of sushi she serves:  each fish has a role to play–some are more dominant, some are more subtle, but together they complement and enhance each other.  Lily’s goal and commitment is that each dish at Eight be a diverse and exciting combination of flavors that “cause your taste buds to dance”. Great sushi is an art and a science and Windy Ho is qualified in both areas.  She holds two Bachelor of Science degrees in microbiology and psychology from the University of Georgia and is currently pursuing her MBA. Windy is Sake Master Certified, pursuing the Sake Sommelier status and her scientific background guides her love for combining the principles of gastronomy with traditional Japanese cuisine to bring a modern flavor profile to each and every dish.  The 25-year-old has worked in the family restaurant business since she was 15, as a manager of their original restaurant Rice, in Cumming, GA, and brings the millennial perspective to Eight Sushi Lounge’s menu and ambiance.

When you ask Camelia Gunawan what her top priority is as general manager of Eight Sushi Lounge, her answer is simple: making diners happy.  sushi bar jena online bestellenShe believes that customer service is her most important job.  ingredientes sushi onlineWith a  background in Management & Hospitality and a dozen years in the restaurant industry, including working as assistant manager at Rice Restaurant, Camelia is continuing her journey as a modern foodie, with a focus on beverage offerings.  sushi grade tuna buyShe is Sake Master Certified and has completed bartender training.  sushi potsdam online bestellen

Hers is the smiling face that greets everyone at Eight Sushi, setting the tone for this one-of-kind Japanese and sushi dining experience.sushi club delivery city bell When you have an experienced chef as a restaurant Vice President you can be sure that the focus is on the quality of the food.  sushi to go port coquitlamJeff Chai brings more than 20 years of experience as an innovative chef with an out-of-the-box approach that combines tradition, culture and futuristic ideas.  sushi order online dublinJeff brings that creativity to the food, the décor and the vibe at Eight Sushi.  He was instrumental in developing the flavor bases that have made Rice Restaurant so successful and brings that sane commitment to excellence to West Midtown Atlanta.

The husband and father of three is known for his finely-tuned taste buds and artistic eye, whether he’s working on plating and presentation or designing interior spaces that are warm, welcoming and reflective of the modern sushi that is served there. To Be Revealed SoonYou’ll do just fine at MF Sushi Atlanta if you like showmanship, an attractive clientele (often in tight dresses), proficient sushi, and eggplant whose pale white flesh is forged over super-hot charcoal to surpassing creaminess. And if you know to ask which fish came in that day, no matter what specials the server announces. And if you don’t mind being occasionally whammed in the taste buds by sriracha and togarashi, found in most anything with the words signature and special. MF Sushi Atlanta is the comeback story of chef-owner Chris Kinjo, who in the early 2000s won accolades for making sushi heavy on the showmanship (MF stands for “magic fingers”) and on the price (omakase meals could top $350 a head).

The cost was apparently worth it: In 2008 John Kessler at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gave MF Buckhead endless column inches of love. But the Buckhead location—8,000 square feet, 276 seats, $350 dinners—was hard to make work once the Great Recession hit. Also, Chris had a taste for ordering big-ticket, exclusive fish from Tsukiji, the famous Tokyo fish market. (I spent the most memorable two hours of this year visiting it for the first time; I felt I was on another planet.) Chris, who worked in dozens of restaurants in Los Angeles before opening his own here in 2002, even had a broker in Japan to pick out rarities for once-a-week shipments. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough wealthy Atlanta sushi fans to keep Kinjo’s empire running; he filed for bankruptcy in 2011. At the end of 2012, he and his brother, Alex, opened an MF Sushi in a Houston strip mall, where they again won loyal fans. Alison Cook, food critic at the Houston Chronicle, was mesmerized by the sight of Chris hoisting mosaic-like strips of bluefin belly and sensuously stroking the fat.

Kinjo was “as good at what he does as the finest sushi masters I’ve encountered,” she wrote, serving “sleek, elemental mouthfuls of letter-perfect rice and surgically cut fish.”Photograph by Caroline C. KilgoreAtlanta loyalists will be excited to know that MF Sushi is back in town, this time in a downsized location in Inman Park (the Houston restaurant is still in place). Assuming they can find it, that is. The restaurant faces a below-street-level courtyard in the new Inman Quarter shopping complex directly across the street from Barcelona Wine Bar, among a host of stores selling locally crafted rugs and furniture. Whether anyone will discover the shops is an open question, since you have to wander in from Elizabeth Street or down a flight of unmarked stairs from North Highland. Once you zero in on the front door, you enter an odd shoebox of a room, long and too bright with silver modernistic beehive chandeliers and Japanese rice paper circles on the ceiling. It’s packed, too, with young people ready to party and rub shoulders with the nattily dressed Alex Kinjo, who bounces among the tables dispensing pats on the shoulders to men and hugs to women.

What they won’t find are Chris and his magic fingers. The dazzling creativity I’ve read about—it’s in Houston, where Chris is keeping the restaurant running while Alex builds the Atlanta location. (Alex says Chris will come in about once a month for omakase dinners, which will start at $125 a head.) Directing the chefs here is the affable and intense Quynh Vung, a Kinjo loyalist since the Buckhead days. He and the kitchen staff are competent and fast, even if the service is slightly spotty; servers buzz by but seldom scan to see if you need anything and never wipe tables, however embarrassingly messy you—by which I mean me—are. It’s hard to get bad sushi here. Fresh nigiri, sashimi, and rolls often feature exceptional fish, particularly the addictive otoro, fatty tuna chopped with scallion and wasabi. The rice is lightly seasoned with soy and mirin and is sticky and slightly warm. The classic nigiri, sashimi, and “traditional” rolls are reliably fresh, with warm rice and cool but not cold (as in, just right) fish.

The nori seaweed wrapper, though, consistently baffled the sushi aficionados I invited to each dinner, because you have to chew it so much longer than anything else. Vung told me he prides himself on finding the freshest seaweed.Photograph by Caroline C. KilgoreBut sushi transcendence? The specials are far more chancy than the classic sushi—a shame, because there are so many of them. It’s as if Vung thinks that high-quality fish, which comes in Tuesday through Thursday from Japan, isn’t quite enough to interest customers. “MF signature nigiri sushi” benefit little from the flavor boosts of, say, truffle soy, serrano peppers, and Dijon mustard, and “special rolls” are frequently goosed with sriracha, red pepper, and the spicy mayo. The servers will steer you to the spicy tuna Osaka box-style roll, with tuna, salmon, and masago; you’ll taste mostly the sriracha, along with the strong afterkick of togarashi, a fiery mixture that usually contains at least seven kinds of pepper and seasoning.

Two kinds of fish did stand out for being both pristine and succulent. The first was a Pacific king salmon—which I could imagine a chef behind the counter stroking to show off the fat—discovered only after inquiring about the source of most of the salmon on the menu (farmed Atlantic salmon). The second was a golden-eye red snapper, a Japanese fish that struck a spectacular balance between the showy richness of otoro and the relative spareness of mackerel or amberjack, which it visually resembled. Those and the chopped otoro roll would be my go-to sushi order, now that I’ve fulfilled my duty of tasting through the nigiri and sashimi menu. (My privilege, let’s be honest—though MF Sushi Atlanta’s prices are average for higher-end restaurants, it’s extremely rare to feel you can try nearly as much as you want.)Photograph by Caroline C. KilgoreOr you can skip the sushi entirely and still come out happy. Vung’s greatest strength lies in specially imported Japanese charcoal, which burns super-hot—1200 degrees Fahrenheit, he told me.

The grilled smelt and mackerel were impeccable—fresh and deep-flavored, with tender flesh and charred yet delicately papery skin. Also expertly charred were the salmon cheek and yellowtail cheek, both fatty and soft within. And that eggplant, dressed with just miso, mirin, and sugar and served on a cube-shaped hibachi, is magical. We ordered it at every dinner to see if the flesh would be as custardy as it was on our first visit. It wasn’t, exactly, but the saving grace of the hibachi is that you can let the food cook a little longer to soften it. Still, every time it seemed like a feat that had the kind of Japanese élan and bold style I’d hoped to find on the rest of the menu. Likely I will, when Chris flies into town. As it happens, I recently moved a few steps from MF Sushi Atlanta. I’ll gladly be a regular for the energy in the room, Alex’s lively welcome, and the simple rolls that can make near-bargain meals. To see what dazzled Buckhead and Houston, though, I’ll wait for a spot at one of those omakase dinners.