akebono - Des Moines, IA

A shout out today to my friend Mike Roederer who is a Front of House Manager at Centro in downtown Des Moines.  I got to know Mikey when he was living in the Quad Cities and he followed his wife Stella to Des Moines when she was accepted to Drake University's Law School.  Mike became a FOH Manager at Centro earlier this year.  He's an avid reader of Road Tips and he told me one time that I really needed to try a new sushi place in downtown Des Moines at some point.  My wife and I went to Des Moines for sort of a short getaway weekend recently and I got hold of Mike to find out the name of the sushi place.  It was called akebono.  

About 13 years ago, a place called Taki opened in the Des Moines suburb of Clive.  It was a combination teppanyaki and sushi restaurant.  Four of the guys who worked at the sushi bar at Taki left there after the place was sold to an interest from Minnesota and looked toward downtown Des Moines to find a location for a sushi restaurant.  The group found a spot in the southwest corner of the stylish Davis Brown Tower at the corner of 10th and Mulberry (see map) and they opened for business in the summer of 2013.  

akebono was possibly named after the great sumo wrestler Akebono Tarō, the first American to reach the pinnacle of sumo wrestling in Japan and who later became a professional wrestler in the U.S. and Japan.  It's an educated guess as the four owners are younger guys that look more like urban hipsters behind the sushi bar rather than full-fledged sushi chefs.  

After parking in the garage attached to the Davis Brown Tower, we found the front door to akebono off of Mulberry.  (We later found that there's a walkway from the lobby along a back corridor that placed us at the same spot without having to go outside.)  It was a busy Saturday night - a large birthday party was going on - and our preferred place to sit at sushi joints - the sushi bar - was full.  They also allowed food at the regular bar at akebono, but Cindy has an aversion to eating at the bar of nice places.  And akebono is a nice place.  

We were told that it could be a 45 minute wait for a seat at the sushi bar and a handful of the tables and booths were empty but reserved for customers.  So we waited.  But we didn't wait any more than about 15 minutes before the hostess came over and told us that she had a booth near the bar that was open until 9 p.m. and we could sit there for dinner until then.  (It was 8:15.)   We decided to take the booth.  

And we're glad we did because our server for the evening - Nick - came over to greet us.  He was outgoing, yet laid-back; funny, yet efficient.  And he gave us a lot of great recommendations.  He took our drink order - an Asahi for me and a house cabernet for Cindy - and we immediately ordered both spicy tuna and spicy salmon rolls to start out.   akebono has a dinner menu that consists of many smaller plates - sort of like the Japanese answer to a Spanish tapas bar.  But we were more interested in the sushi menu and some of the interesting stuff they had to offer.  

Both the spicy tuna and spicy salmon rolls were very good.  They had great flavor, but weren't overly spicy.  The rolls had wonderful consistency and held together well in the seaweed wrapping.  It was a great start to the meal.  

Our next plate consisted of ahi tuna poke, Hawaiian-style.  They took a thick cut of ahi tuna, seared it at a high temperature, then served it on a bed of greens in a garlic sesame soy sauce.  This was recommended by Nick and this, alone, was worth the price of admission.  The sushi grade tuna was just fabulous.  With a bit of the bitter from the soy sauce and a hint of garlic taste, there were a lot of wonderful taste combinations going on with this dish.  

Our next dish was also recommended by Nick and I believe this was called a Nonsense roll - it was sort of a plethora of different types of fresh sushi rolled around spicy tuna or rice or chopped sushi or whatever.  It isn't listed on the sushi roll menu that is on akebono's website, but I specifically wrote down the name of the roll.  I didn't quite know what what it was all about other than it just tasted great.  Take my word - if you like sushi, you would have LOVED this sushi roll.  

Finally, we got into the sushi.  We were wondering about the Tasmanian salmon and the Hawaiian big-eye tuna that they had on the menu.  Nick said, "Oh, man.  Yeah, I'd say get the Tasmanian salmon.  It has somewhat of a smoky flavor, but it's not smoked.  And the Hawaiian maguro is, well, it's like eating butter.  It almost melts in your mouth."  

And he was correct on both descriptions.  We were both in heaven with the Tasmanian salmon.  If one didn't know - and that could be us - you would have thought that it was truly smoked salmon.  But they said it wasn't.  The taste was just fabulous.   And the big-eye maguro was just as advertised - it literally melted in your mouth.  

After we finished the four pieces each of the Tasmanian salmon and the big-eye maguro, Nick came over and said, "Well?"  We couldn't believe it.   It was getting to be just after 9 p.m. and the hostess said that they had people coming in at 9 for the booth.   But the sushi was so good that we wanted to order up two more pieces each of the Tasmanian salmon and the big-eye maguro.  Nick said, "Hey, don't worry.  We're not going to move you out of here."  He pointed around the dining room and he said, "We've got a lot of tables open.  If they've come in by now, they've been seated."  

After finishing dinner, we walked down the street to have a drink at the bar at Centro.  Mike was working the front and he greeted us as we walked in.  He said, "So, what did you think of akebono?"  We told him that it was just as he said it would be.  The service from Nick was absolutely the best - he gave great recommendations, he had a great sense of humor and he never once made us feel rushed or hurried even though we were initially told by the hostess we'd have until 9 p.m. to eat and give up our space.  In fact, it was close to 10 p.m. before we left, we were having such a good time trying different things on the akebono menu. Not only was it a great experience dining there, this was simply some of the best sushi we'd ever had - and it was in Des Moines, Iowa!

Comments

[Mikey]

Thanks for the shout out! Great write up as usual!

[Slakingfool]

You were just around the corner from me! I recently went there for a Firetrucker tap takeover and had a sample of a delightful appetizer of rib meat wrapped asparagus.