A seafood bowl, an unforgettable dessert, and the little details that leave me reminiscing about Japan.
Last weekend, we went to Portland, Maine for a quick one-night getaway to refresh. Our trips to Portland are usually more like “eat-aways” than getaways - but anyone in New England will tell you that food in Portland is a cut above.
Here’s some of what we ate, before we get to the main point - no pun intended.
Today, I’ll just focus on one restaurant: Mr. Tuna, whose chef, Jordan Rubin, was a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Northeast.
Cory loves watching Top Chef, and we’ve tried a few restaurants with James Beard recognition. We’ve had mostly very positive experiences, so our expectations were a bit higher than, say, for the average restaurant with 4.5 stars on Google.
The real reason we ended up trying Mr. Tuna was because it was one of only three restaurants we found in Portland where we could use Chase Sapphire Reserve’s twice-yearly $150 dining credit through OpenTable.
Glancing at the menu beforehand, we could tell they charged an arm and a leg for everything. But hey, it had great reviews and they emphasized locally sourced seafood - it sounded pretty promising.
Let’s just say I’m thankful that most of our bill was covered by the credit.
It wasn’t bad.
In fact, I kind of enjoyed the meal overall.
We both ordered the tuna donburi, which came with akami tuna sashimi, tuna tataki, ikura, and tuna tartare over a bowl of sushi rice for $46 each. I added a side of uni for an additional $22 (yikes).
I apologize ahead of time because your eyes will squirm from the vibrant pink colors below.
I’m so sorry about the lighting. I swear I tried. There was a bright neon pink sign above our table, and I couldn’t get rid of the pink tint with regular editing. Truth be told, the presentation was quite fine in the flesh.
True to its name, the tuna sashimi pieces and tuna tartare were great. The tataki and uni, not so much.
Nearby, there is ISF Trading, a Japanese-owned seafood market that has some of my favorite uni. The Japanese-owned sushi restaurant, Miyake (which we swear by), always uses uni that is of similar caliber.
10-piece nigiri omakase at Miyake.
So you can understand my disappointment when I received 9 slivers of uni, which tasted like the cheaper uni you can find in an average Japanese supermarket.
That kind of uni can be fine, but this had a more pasty texture and tasted a little bit more doctored - like you’re eating uni-paste, instead of the ensui uni I prefer. Ensui uni is packed in a saltwater solution, and I love its delicate texture and clean, briny flavor.
So that was strike one. Strike two was the sushi rice.
We make plenty of sushi rice at home for temaki nights (hand rolls), and we use good quality rice, like the ones curated by the rice factory New York.
We also have great sashimi nearby our house! So fresh, everyone is standing taking photos.
The rice here was flaky and lacked luster and texture. Was it bad? No. But the flavor of the sushi rice was also generic.
The actual cuts of tuna were good, and the overall meal was saved by their amazing ice cream toasties (ice cream sandwiches made with warm pressed Hawaiian bread) - we got the brown butter and lychee black tea ice cream with caramelized apples. It brought back a lot of my childhood memories of eating ice cream sandwiches during school lunch and eating McDonald’s apple pies. And the warm bun cocooning the delicate ice cream with perfectly balanced sweet-tart apple chunks was insane.
Just for this, I would return. (I don’t have pictures of it because I gave up on photos after the pink beam of death killed my first few attempts. Please search “Mr. Tuna ice cream toastie” and you’ll get a good look at one.)
We ended up getting a couple of drinks on top of this, and the total with tip came to $206 - or $56 out of pocket after the $150 credit.
Without the $150 credit, I’d have to say it’s not worth a repeat.
Why am I writing about this?
Because in my experience, good sushi in the States can be really hard to find.
Understandably, this wasn’t a traditional sushi restaurant - it was a contemporary take on sushi rolls and kaisendon, or seafood bowls. But that kind of restaurant is common in Japan.
I get it - it’s not fair to compare Japanese prices to Portland, Maine, where restaurant seafood prices are already bonkers.
In Japan, $46 could get you two very decent seafood bowls, or one decadent bowl.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I was genuinely shocked at the gap between this meal and the seafood bowls I’ve enjoyed in Japan.
With the seafood Maine has to offer, I think the potential is there.
But so much comes down to how the fish is cut, how it’s presented, and all the smaller details like rice, vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, wasabi, etc.
I hope that more and more restaurants here take Japanese sushi to the next level. Sure, it may not be as affordable (relatively) as it is in Japan, but the potential is here to recreate the craftsmanship I love in Japan, with that same attention to detail.
How do you feel? Have you found a sushi or seafood spot in the States that you will stand by?
A few photos of our Portland trip we wanted to share for the vibes. We stayed at the Canopy by Hilton Portland Waterfront, our favorite in South Portland.
