Who Likes Sushi?

Who doesn't enjoy great sushi?!

I was with Sarah, a friend of mine Eric, and his girlfriend Rachael, when we began debating the best sushi restaurants in Indianapolis. It is a debate that has raged among a variety of my circles of friends. In any case, I challenged Eric that the northside of Indy had better sushi restaurants than the southside of Indy -- and would undoubtedly have the very best single sushi restaurant as well. Eric strongly disagreed and pointed to several great options on the southside of Indy.

Thus was born The Great Sushi Showdown of 2010-2011.

The Challenge:

Each group of contestants (Eric/Rachael and Ryan/Sarah) must come up with five sushi restaurants in their respective area of town (defined in this competition as northside for Ryan/Sarah and southside for Eric/Rachael.) These ten sushi restaurants will battle to help declare their area of town as the best for sushi...and will also determine the overall title for Best Sushi Restaurant in Indy (declared by us).

The Rules:

• North/South dividing line is Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis with a latitude line drawn East/West from it. This marks the northside/southside dividing line.
• Each team selects five restaurants
• Each team will rank their sushi restaurants honestly from their perceived best (1) to moderate (5).
• Restaurants will be judged in Rounds that consist of one northside and one southside sushi restaurant visited within 10 days of one another and on similar types of days (weekday/weekend) for consistency.
• One round will be conducted per month.
  
• Rounds will pit evenly ranked restaurants against each other in the following order: 5, 3, 4, 2, 1.
• The rounds will rotate starting restaurants (it has been determined that #5 northside will be visited first, then within 10 days the #5 southside restaurant. The next round will rotate such that the #3 southside restaurant will be first followed by the #3 northside within 10 days.)
• Each team selects a rotating couple to accompany and assist as unbiased judges. (Total of eight people involved each time.)
• At the end, the side of town with the highest average rating will be declared the best side of town.
• To determine the best sushi restaurant, we will pit the highest rated restaurant from each side of town against one another in a Final Round Championship. To be eligible for the final round, the highest rated restaurant from the northside and southside will be selected so that each restaurant must be the highest rated sushi restaurant that also won its round. Tie breakers include: Must win their round, then best Overall category rating, best Food category rating, best Service category rating, best Value category rating, best Atmosphere/Presentation rating, best Food>subcategory Taste rating, then a coin toss. (See rating rules for more details.)
• Final Round Championship tie-breaker will follow the same rules noted above.
• Restaurants will be judged by traditional, specialty and sashimi rolls, as well as other factors. (See rating rules.)

Rating Scorecard:

Sushi restaurants will be rated on a five point scale, (1 is worst, 5 is best) among five key categories:

• Atmosphere/Presentation
• Service
• Value
• Food*
• Traditional Rolls (at least two = spicy tuna, rainbow)
• Specialty Rolls (four)
• Sashimi (four)
• Freshness
• Taste
• Overall
  

*(The Food category will have five subcategories that will average together to determine the Food category rating.) The final rating score of each restaurant will be based on the average of the five categories.

The Ranked Contenders:

Northside

1. Taki
2. Tomo
3. Sakura
4. Naked Tchopstix
5. H2O Sushi

Southside

1. Yokohama
2. Mikado
3. Fujiyama
4. Kabuto
5. Ichiban

The Start:

The competition begins on September 11, 2010 with H2O Sushi, followed on September 17th by Ichiban on the southside of town to finish the first round.

One thing is for certain -- we are going to taste some great sushi during the next several months! Best of luck to everyone! I will provide updates on our experiences through this blog, as well as guest articles authored from the other contestants.