OK, so in my never-ending quest to find the best spicy tuna sushi roll in the greater Metro Atlanta Area, I dropped in on Samurai Blue in Lawrenceville. To date, the best spicy tuna to be found in the area is at Shogun just down the road, so Mr. Samurai has his work cut out for him.
In my never-ending search for the best spicy tuna roll in the Greater Metro Atlanta Area, Samurai Blue came up a little short.
Because it was a late lunch, I was pretty hungry, so in addition to the spicy tuna roll (tuna in a hot mixture & cucumber, $4.25), I ordered an Alaskan roll (salmon, king crab and avocado $4.25), as well as some hamachi (yellow tail), sake (salmon), maguro (tuna), tobiko (flying fish roe) and unagi (BBQ eel) nigriri.
After a short wait in the dining room, which was looking particularly Japanese with the trees outside the picture windows covered in white-pink flowers, the sushi was delivered and I proceeded to dig in, starting, of course, with the spicy tuna.
At Samurai Blue, the tuna in the spicy mixture was not minced as I am accustomed to, but chunkier, which I kinda liked. But the spicy mixture was mild and not what I was looking for in a “spicy” tuna roll. And the Alaska roll turned out to be pretty bland, too. But what should I have been expecting with a roll of salmon, avocado and crab meat?
The fish, overall, was fresh and each piece of the nigiri had a nice flavor: the yellow tail tasted like it was supposed to, as did the others.
So, on the whole, it was a little disappointing—something I guess I’m going to have to expect when trying new places around Atlanta—but I’m not ready to write off Samurai Blue. I’ll give it another try in a few months and see if I just got the chef on a bad day.
Samurai Blue Japanese Grill and Sushi
2000 Riverside Pkwy,
Lawrenceville, Ga. 30043
678.518.4216
Post by and photos credited to Gregory Watkins.