I live in West Philly so I'll often pass Kidari going into the city, but hadn't slowed down enough to notice until recently. My girlfriend and I were walking the block while visiting a patient at the nearby hospital when I noticed a sign for their sushi happy hour and they were BYO! Bring your own beer while being served half-priced sushi sounded like a great idea!
When I found out that Kidari was upcoming on Sam and Sandya's list, I asked to join them for the chance to finally check it out. The important details: BYO, half-price select rolls and snacks from 4:30-6:30pm on week days.
We arrived around 5pm on a warm but clear Thursday to a mostly empty restaurant. The hostess was very polite and brought cold ice water to the table. She offered to bring ice buckets for the beers I brought and provided nice stemmed wine glasses to drink from. The decor of the restaurant was fairly sparse, but clean and tasteful. There were some ethnic trinkets, random seashell shadow boxes, and probably a folding screen in the corner. A pretty generic "Asian bistro" look for this city. Service was very polite and attentive
We were waiting for some others to arrive, but decided to order some gyoza, steamed edamame, and a handful of rolls for the table. The gyoza arrived quickly, were hot and coated in a layer of hot oil. Not sure if they were house made, but they were cooked well enough.
The edamame were very good but unspectacular, a fault of the ingredient and not the preparation--which was piping hot, covered in just the right amount of coarse salt, and tender with a little bite. The plate of sushi came a little after.
I am not a big fan of sushi rolls. In general, this is a dumping ground for inferior fish and filler ingredients that is then covered in spicy mayo, eel sauce, flying fish roe or other masking agents. To me, it's fast food sushi. That's not to say that I don't enjoy a spicy tuna roll or a Double Whopper, but these foods are enjoyable to me only in the context of their value. They are good only if they are tasty and cheap.
At happy hour, there were probably dozen sushi rolls and appetizers that were 50% off. I hope someone has a picture of the menu. The rolls were all 6-8 pieces and between $6-7 normally priced, so $3-3.5 at Happy Hour, so that covers the cheap part of the equation.
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Sorry Michael! I only have a picture of the happy hour menu without the original prices...
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I don't quite remember what maki we ordered, but it was the usual suspects of spicy tuna, eel & cucumber, salmon & avocado, tempura veggie, etc. The sushi was well constructed, and the rice was a good texture. The ingredients were fresh tasting and the sauces were not abused. In whole, the sushi was unremarkable and not unlike sushi you'd find in a cafeteria. The highlight was definitely the tempura veggie roll (SPT/Sweet Potato Tempura I think) that was presented in a way I had not seen before. The veggies were thinly julienned and fried like shoe-string potatoes before being stuff into the roll. They retained the natural flavor of the sweet potato while still being crunchy.
In all, I thought the food we ordered was good, but generic and unmemorable. Maybe this was a function of the frugal happy hour menu. I like the service, especially the ice buckets for our BYO beverages and the restaurant was clean. Though I don't have Celiac's, I appreciate that they had gluten-free soy sauce. I would not make a special trip to come back again for this happy hour, since I'm not close, but if I lived in the neighborhood, I could totally see this as a fairly regular place to hang out and have a couple cold beers while sharing snacks with friends.
Kidari Sushi Yatai
1824 South Street
Philadelphia PA 19146
267-273-0426
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