Maruhide Uni Club

In the past 2 years I've really developed an appreciation for uni.  Smooth Obturator would order it all the time but I would just give him and those ugly fleshy orange blobs the stink eye.  I don't really know when/how things changed for me, but I just can't get enough uni nowadays.  So when I heard about Maruhide Uni Club as a restaurant solely dedicated to serving uni bowls and other more interesting preparations of uni, I jumped at the chance to go.  Big Willie, who should probably be renamed to Ugly Mullet Head, and Speaker Monkey were down to join me for a slice of uni heaven.

The place is pretty spacious with high ceilings which is sort of unusual for Japanese restaurants as we all know.  They have a fridge with all sorts of uni preparations including the marinated uni, or uni shuntou.

Probably a dead uni for show right?

Salad
Completely uninspired filler food.  Whateves, we were so starved by this point.

Uni Soup
Not much uni flavor going on here.  Tasted like miso soup with some uni bits floating at the bottom.  Poor Speaker Monkey didn't get his soup till after his uni bowl came AND he had to ask multiple times for it.

Sea Urchin salmon roe, scallop
Big Willie seemed to enjoy his bowl.  Everything seemed fresh.  He's not too particular about his food and he seemed happy.  Good is good.

Sea Urchin tuna, marinated sea urchin
Thumbs and I ordered the same thing, but his bowl came like 30 minutes after mine.  We were kind of annoyed since we were bordering on hangry.  I mean how long does it take to scoop rice and put a whole bunch of raw stuff on top??  It was as if they were taking the time to go out and fish for the uni, kill it, and harvest its roe.  The wet brown pile at the bottom of the picture is the marinated uni.  The flavor profile is definitely Japanese, sweet maybe from mirin?, salty obviously from soy sauce, but there was definitely a bit too much fishiness overall for my liking.  It's good they only served a small amount because a little bit goes a loooong way.  The tuna was just average quality.  The uni omelette which are the triangle things in the upper corner tasted a lot like tamago, sweet, with a subtle hint of uni.  I don't really like tamago much.  Now for the uni itself, it was good but I think it was uni overload.  I think I would prefer a few pieces of very high quality uni nigiri instead of 8 pieces of medium quality uni.

So we all had high hopes for Maruhide but the long wait for Speaker Monkey's order left us a bit annoyed.  I don't think Speaker Monkey or I really loved the marinated uni and the uni itself wasn't the best of the best.  For what Maruhide is, you're not gonna find any other place like it.  I would go back just to take other people and maybe try some of their other uni dishes, like the pasta or croquette.  I think if you can eat loads of uni and not feel ill, this is the place for you.  For me it was just too much.  Speaker Monkey actually had to finish my bowl because I was in an uni coma...well, almost.