430pm. Tasting new specials for our staff daily to get thoughts, feedback and opinions… before we print menus for the evening. This plays a large part in my thinking that everyone has a voice and the more opinions and tastes we can get before a dish goes to the diner the better!

Here’s the challenge with Uchi: menus. We coordinate three menus every day. Daily specials of seasonal ingredients (usually 10-12 composed dishes), a permanent tasting menu of hot dishes, tempura & grill… and also a full service sushi bar and sushi menu of cold tastings, sushi, sashimi and rolls!

This is a picture of our service kitchen. Small space with 3 stations: saute, grill and tempura/fryer.  This area has changed and evolved over the years to many different set ups… the current being great with the ability to run 3 stations with 2 people when necessary. Stainless table in the foreground is our expo, and grill is off picture to the right. The tempura is fried in a Japanese copper/brass pot to the left, and our Montague stove is off photo far left. Permanent menu items and composed specials come off  these stations. This photo was at 5pm before things got too busy. Imagine these 2 guys knocking out food for 300 people by night’s end!

Our grill station in the Uchi kitchen uses a grill that was built in Japan and runs off of compressed Japanese oak charcoal called “binchotan”. The binchotan burns at 600-800 degrees and holds a temp just below that for hours. The secret to these long charcoal bricks is a hole drilled lengthwise through them to allow air to circulate inside the charcoal and let them take full effect and add longevity to the burn.

This dish is called “kona kampachi” and is part of our permanent menu at Uchi.  It’s steamed koshi hikari rice with fresh kampachi (baby yellowtail) sliced into small pieces and topped with scallion, bonito flakes and a raw farm fresh egg. The key to this dish is the bowl/nabe is screaming hot when the rice is placed inside, and gets the rice very crispy by the time it hits the table. Sweet soy is poured table side and everything is mixed together before eating. The raw kampachi cooks with the egg and crispy rice to make for a wonderful Uchi “rice bowl”.  I eat at least 2 of these a week!