What: The No Name 2, as Part of All-You-Can-Eat Sushi
Where: No Da Te, 73655 El Paseo, Palm Desert
How much: $35 during our visit; $9 for just the roll
Contact: 760-340-3698
Why: Sometimes it’s good to splurge … responsibly.
On a recent visit to San Francisco, we decided to try an adorable little Japantown sushi restaurant. Its shtick: All of the customers sat around a little moat that had miniature boats with sushi on them constantly floating by. You could grab whatever you wanted; you knew the cost based on the type and color of the dish.
It was cute. It was fun. And it was fiscally dangerous: One particularly ravenous member of our party wound up racking up a $75 bill. On lunch.
This is why I prefer all-you-can-eat (AYCE) sushi joints: You walk in; you find out the price; and you can enjoy all the yumminess that you want without worrying about receiving a crazy-stupid bill at the end.
This is not to say that AYCE sushi is necessarily inexpensive; for example, when I walked into El Paseo sushi joint No Da Te for lunch recently, I paid $35, which is far more than I’d normally spend on lunch. However, $35 is a lot less than $75—and if I would have paid for everything I enjoyed separately, I would have spent closer to $75 than $35.
The food I had at No Da Te was fantastic across the board, but my favorite item was the No Name 2 roll—shrimp tempura, avocado, crab, egg and freshwater eel, all lovingly wrapped in soybean paper, and drizzled with just a touch of sweet eel sauce. It was splendid.
I recommend calling ahead to No Da Te to find out how much your AYCE meal will be—prices vary—but you can rest assured: Whatever that cost is, that’s all you’ll pay, as long as you stick to the AYCE menu. Relax; eat; savor; enjoy.