King of the Roll

King of the Roll lives up to its name.

Located at 675 Congress Street, you'll recognize it by the illuminated Michelob sign in the front window and soft red glow of light flooding the restaurant inside - sort of gives a "you've entered the Twilight Zone" kind of feel.

We settled into a booth and were immediately greeted by our waitress who offered us drinks and shared the specials of the evening. The service throughout our meal was exceptional; the timing between courses was perfect, the waitress was knowledge, friendly and upbeat.

We started with the shrimp dumplings (only available fried - not steamed) and a seaweed salad. The dumplings were served piping hot, had a thin and delicate wrapper and were filled with sweet shrimp. The delicate ingredients were overpowered by the taste of oil used in the frying, however. For this reason, I prefer my dumplings steamed. The seaweed salad was uninteresting and lacked flavor. Miyake does it better.

Next came the Nigiri: Unagi (eel), Hamachi (yellowtail), Maguro (ahi tuna) and Sake (salmon). Each piece of fish was translucent and, well, slimy is the best word to describe the fish. It had seen better days. The Masago (lobster egg) was excellent, crunchy roe set upon rice and wrapped with delicate seaweed.

The Tekka Maki (tuna roll) held diced tuna (as opposed to a solid piece of tuna wrapped with rice and seaweed). Dicing the tuna made gave it a mushy consistency.

And then the speciality rolls arrived. The Casco Bay Roll, a maki roll filled with tuna, wrapped in seaweed and rice and then quickly fried, tempura style. It was topped with two sauces: a wasabi sauce and "special sauce" (our waitress would not share the ingredients) - that tasted exactly like honey BBQ sauce. I don't care much for fried food and had I known this roll was, I likely wouldn't have ordered it. Thank goodness I did! I would go back for this roll alone. The flavors of the secret sauce, combined with the wasabi and tuna were perfectly harmonious.

The Dragon Roll was equally divine. Containing shrimp, crab, unagi, avocado and topped with tobiko, it was a work of art on the plate and tasted even better than it looked.

Stick with the rolls at King of the Roll. A few that caught my eye for their creativity include The Rising Sun Roll (7 different fish, topped with tobiko & quail egg), the Kamakaze Roll (grilled hamachi, unagi, crab and tobiko), the Queen Roll (grilled fresh scallops, salmon and crab), the King Roll (soft shell crab, scallop, tobiko and real crab topped with unagi).

The best sushi in Portland? Nope. The most creative rolls? You bet.