Just off Spearfish Main St., halfway down Hudson, stands Fujisan, Spearfish’s residential sushi restaurant. A small spot, with red curtains on the windows, red paint on the walls and red accents everywhere else. A mysterious staircase to nowhere sits to your left as you walk in. An open sushi bar sits in the back corner with tables surrounding and leading back to the front door. Lights hang over every table, giving an intimate vibe to the dining experience.
If you come in for lunch, you will be treated to their dim sum menu. This menu includes dumplings, fried rice dishes, hot pot and many non-sushi options.
For lunch, I ordered their chicken fried rice, fried pork dumplings, coconut shrimp and a peach tea to wash it all down.
The fried pork dumplings came out first, served on a bed of shredded cabbage with a side of soy sauce. They were crispy, but with a chewy texture that nicely contrasted the crunch. The filling was flavorful, with chives mixed into the ground pork.
The chicken sticky rice was presented wrapped in a lotus leaf. Once unwrapped, it released a lovely earthy scent from the mushrooms that are cooked into the chicken. The texture of the rice is exactly as you’d expect it: sticky and chewy. When dipped into the chili sauce given with the dish, and mixed with a bit of soy sauce, as recommended by my waitress, the chicken mushrooms became transformed and took on a sweetly savory profile, while still maintaining the earthy tones.
The coconut shrimp, a classic, was light, crunchy and sweet. Topped with toasted coconut flakes, the flavor of coconut gives you the best punch in the face ever. Served with rice on the side, and atop a bed of cabbage and broccoli, while not particularly note-worthy, Fujisan definitely did this classic justice.
The peach tea was a sweet, flavored green tea that was a refreshing palate cleanser in between dishes.
While their lunch is delicious, and has a large variety of options, dinner is where the star of the show makes an appearance: the sushi.
Fujisan features a variety of different rolls and sashimi, featuring salmon, tuna, crab, red snapper and eel. They also feature many vegetarian options including their sweet potato roll and many entrees that fall under this category.
For dinner, I ordered the Philly roll, the spicy tuna roll, and the sesame chicken.
The Philly roll features salmon, cream cheese and cucumber. The balance of the salmon and cream cheese left a balanced rich flavor and texture to the roll. They didn’t overdo the cream cheese, like many places do. This enhanced the spotlight on the salmon and fresh cucumber, without leaving you chewing for a minute or more on one piece of the roll. Overall, a very clean taste that left the dish with little more to be desired.
The spicy tuna roll included tuna mixed with spicy mayo, with crunchy, assumed to be, tempura flakes. The roll was then topped with more spicy mayo. The tuna tasted very fresh and had the nice lean, meaty flavor that tuna often carries. The only thing I would have liked was a tad bit more spice, but I do appreciate that they didn’t make the roll so spicy that you couldn’t taste any of the flavors.
Lastly, the sesame chicken. A sweet dish that wasn’t overdone to the point of being sickly sweet, served with broccoli and rice. A score of ten out of ten on texture, being chewy and crunchy, with the breading still maintaining its integrity under the weight of the sauce. A great quick meal for someone craving chicken.
Overall, the portions were amazing, allowing you to get full, but not eat yourself into sickness. The prices are worth the quality you’re receiving, and the staff is incredibly nice and informative. Fujisan is a place I will be frequenting in the future, time and time again.