Aint No Mountain High Enough...

Fuji Mountain 

2030 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103

www.fujimt.com 

During the Lenten season last year, I had completely blanked when making dinner reservations. I didn’t even think to book some sushi restaurants, so this year I wanted to make sure we got a good mix of stuff in. For the second sushi place we tried, we went over to Fuji Mountain because I had read some good things about it. We walked in and were immediately seated and began perusing the menu. They definitely had some good choices, so we had to make some tough decisions. We decided on some vegetable spring rolls to start, and then the following rolls listed out below:

·         Spider roll - soft shell crab tempura, lettuce and spicy sauce

·         Mexico roll - shrimp, avocado, masago, and spicy sauce

·         Spicy trio - chopped sashimi with spicy sauce, crab stick

·         Spicy scallop - scallop, masago, scallion, and spicy sauce

·         Florida Roll - salmon, masago, spicy sauce and avocado

The spring rolls came out first, so we dug into them immediately. They were piping hot, but they were pretty traditional spring rolls. Some crunchy vegetables stuffed inside the fried wrapper and then dipped into the sweet chili dipping sauce. It was good, but nothing amazing. I am not a huge spring roll guy, so I guess that’s probably why I felt that way. 

The sushi came out all together, but the presentation wasn’t really very appealing. Actually everything about the restaurant was a little boring. The decoration certainly felt a little Japanese, but it was very bland. The same could be said about the look of the sushi plate when it came out, and unfortunately, the same could be said about the taste of the sushi. I really wasn’t crazy about any of them. I liked the crunchiness of the soft shell crab in the spider roll, but the other sushi rolls were pretty forgettable. The sauces were very lackluster, and the fish simply wasn’t of good enough quality to carry these sushi rolls to that umami zone. My girlfriend and I were pretty disappointed, especially because the price point was higher than the delicious sushi we had at Fat Salmon two weeks prior.

One and half pints for Fuji Mountain. They definitely offer up a wide variety of sushi options, but unfortunately for my taste, they just were very underwhelming. They have some decent sushi, and I am sure the rest of their food is pretty decent as well, but there are definitely better options for sushi out there in the city. Cheers!