Sushi By The Singing Fountain

Craig LaBan discovers not all of East Passyunk is Italian and that Izumi provides a great new sushi destination for the neighborhood.

The sushi kitchen is clearly Izumi’s strength, with a focus on standards presented with attention to detail, quality, and value rather than anything especially innovative. And sushi chef Agus Lukito, an Indonesian-born chef trained at Teikoku and most recently at Mikado, does an excellent job.

His fish is superbly fresh, cut with precision, and wrapped around good rice – toothsomely firm and nicely seasoned with kombu-flavored vinegar. This is on full display in the platters, which, at 32 pieces for $50 (and half as many for $25), is a solid quality-value. It featured some less common additions – the sea-savory tang of horse mackerel, the tender snap of rouge-tipped surf clam, sweet white albacore, and a nearly translucent, delicate fluke – to the usual tuna-salmon-yellowtail mainstays.

Izumi [Philadelphia Inquirer]
Izumi [Official Site]