Whoooa, wait a sec. You've dined at Morimoto's? Wow.
OK, PLEASE give a small dining critique on the experiences? I can gather from your comments in your post that you had a wonderful time, but I am totally begging for details.
We love Morimoto and Japanese food, so this would be a true splurge for us, too.
I've dined there more then once, I've been a few times, even though I live 5 hours away, and we're probably going down this fall too.
Now, there is more then one Morimoto in the US, the original is Philadelphia, however the first venture of Morimoto in the US was Nobu in NYC.
The restaurant is very modern with a contemporary twist. The median walls change color through out the meal but the overall restaurant is fairly dark.
I've eaten in the general dining area and when we took my friend at the Sushi Bar, which I would definately do again as it really puts you close to the chefs, and you can view a little into the "hot food" kitchen (not really intentionally designed as an open kitchen, but from the Sushi bar you can see back there.
Avoiding discussions of "price" per se, it was a very expensive Omakase, off menu and included 9 courses. Some were more memorable then others and I'll be honest, I would never recommend getting the Alcohol Omakase, espicially off menu, its just too much alcohol and even just drinking a small amount of each drink will leave you pretty toasted.
Some of the most memorable dishes was the salt encrusted sweet fish. Each of us was served a sweet fish that was cooked in the hot kitchen in a salt crust. It was not cooked in any other fashion besides being buried in a mound of salt. When it comes it there is a banana leaf with a mound of salt with a small crack horizontally midway down.
We all knew what it was (we've watched Iron Chef a few times), but had no clue how to open it properly, eat it, etc. So we asked the master chef on that night (Morimoto was not at the restaurant that night) how to eat it. Instead of just explaining it though, he walked around the sushi bar and came to each one of us, opened our salt crust, and pulled every peice of amazingly cooked sweet fish off each little bone. While he was doing it, he told us which sections offered the most flavor and how he'd recommend eating the fish.
The next course that was most memorable was the mushroom dish. It was basically a quickly heated mushroom salad with varying mushrooms from sliced hen of the woods, to small handful off matsutake mushrooms on top. I love mushrooms to begin with and it really gives you appreciation to how different each one is in terms of flavor, texture and density.
A few of the other courses was a Soy Sea Bass, Traditional Sushi Tray with Eel (I love eel, but often the sauce its cooked with is over powering at places, this was VERY well balanced), Octopus, Sea Urchin (not my favorite, even from Morimotos, I've tried it other places too, and just cannot get into it), Yellowtail, Red Snapper and a few more typical (ie. Salmon and Tuna).
In terms of drinks, we had both hot and cold sake (note: some sake is best served warm, others cold, so don't just start warming your sake at home) and one of the best drinks was a cucumber martini. I love martinis, and I've since tried to duplicate this drink, but I just cannot.
All in all, the experience was amazing, I have a picture of us all with the Master Chef at the end of dinner (and pretty drunk from the alcohol) and I can just remember the excitement my bestfriend had over the entire experience. If you love sushi and are adventerous (ie, eat anything thrown your way) I'd recommend making the trip there to eat.
