May 01, 2015 Food + Drink » 7 Nights Spotlight

        
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San Sai Japanese Restaurant Serves Exceptional Seafood in Burlington

By Alice Levitt @AliceEats

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Matthew Thorsen
San Sai in Burlington

Landlocked Vermont is not an obvious destination for exceptional seafood. And though San Sai is located on Burlington's waterfront with a prime view of Lake Champlain, the local perch and crappie are not among the exquisite fish served there. Chef-owners Kazutoshi Maeda and Chris Russo specialize in traditional sushi prepared for a modern palate.

click to enlarge

Matthew Thorsen
San Sai in Burlington

Their rice is never anything less than perfect: sticky but not gooey, soft but not mushy. San Sai's fish is so clean-tasting that even the seafood-averse might reconsider after a rectangle of tuna marinated in red wine, or fluke wrapped in a single shiso leaf with a blob of pickled plum.

Sushi combos may also include raw fluke sizzling with the fragrant acid of a squeeze of yuzu; a whisper of tea-flavored salt calms the burn. A mound of sweet carrot purée enhances the brilliant orange of a finger's length of salmon.

For $35, a Chef's Choice tasting reaches its crescendo with such a sushi plate. But the four preceding courses are just as creatively conceived. Even a simple salad, dressed in soy and sesame, crackles with the fatty flavor of crispy salmon skin in place of croutons. Salmon-nose cartilage is mixed with a salad of thinly sliced carrot and daikon and topped with a snow of shaved radish and bursting orange orbs of ikura.

San Sai even offers home-cooked comfort food to those who crave it. Maeda and Russo's kakuni is a towering slab of fatty pork shoulder braised in a sweet mirin soy sauce. Served over mashed potatoes in a pool of the dark braising liquid, it's a beautiful marriage of rib-sticking warmth and the chefs' passion for outsize flavor.

It's clear that the haute cuisiniers love their adopted home. And Vermonters love them right back.