Boston Day 3: The Extraordinary “O Ya,” The Sum of All Sushi
Scottish Salmon Belly with Cilantro, Ginger, Hot Sesame Oil Drizzle
On my first day in Boston while riding in a cab, mid-afternoon, through the stunning Back Bay area, I texted my friends: I’m in love with Boston. The second evening, I texted: You know you’ve been living in the NC Mountains too long when riding mass transit through Boston feels like a fun urban adventure.
Tonight, I text the same group of friends while in transit from my airport conference hotel to my destination restaurant in the Leather District: I’m breaking up with Boston. Stuck in a cab for an hour in rush-hour traffic trying to get to dinner. Irreconcilable differences.
I remind myself that this is a great opportunity to practice patience and presence because I have yet to master the Zen of sitting in traffic. I finally arrive, ready for a cocktail, at my destination.
I exit the taxi at a quiet back-alley intersection and look around. I see nothing except tall old brick buildings with no sign of anything resembling a restaurant façade. Across the alley a young man and woman sit on the steps at the corner of what appears to be a residential building. “Can you tell me where O Ya Restaurant is”? I ask. They both point to the corner of the building right behind me, where the cabbie had dropped me off. I turn around and, sure enough, high above a nondescript wooden door a modest sign reads: O Ya.
O Ya Exterior
I laugh at myself and thank them. As I’m turning to walk up the few steps to reach the door, the woman says, “You are going to love it.” The man chimes in his agreement and they both animate with nods and eye twinkles as they praise the restaurant. I’m not surprised. I rarely visit a city without seeking out what is hailed as the best sushi restaurant in the area. From the online reviews, O Ya clearly holds that distinction in Boston.
I open the wood door and enter into a small, plain wood and brick foyer, and am at once impressed by the understatement. Ahead of me is a simple, dimly lit podium area where a woman greets me and asks if I have a reservation. “No,” I answer, “but it’s just me so I thought I would eat at the sushi bar,” which I now see to the left as I stand at the podium.
I always sit at the bar when traveling alone and rarely ever have a problem getting a spot, especially since I’m an early eater. Turns out that O Ya requires reservations for the bar as well, and due to a cancellation, they have one spot available for the early part of the evening. Whew! After that cab ride, I’m so ready to just relax, enjoy a cocktail and ponder an amazing array of superior Japanese food options.
However, the cocktail part of the evening begins to look like a nonstarter when, seeing no cocktail selection on the wall behind the sushi bar, I inquire with the hostess and she says they only serve beer and wine. So my first pleasant surprise comes after I’m seated and handed the beer and wine menu. At the bottom is a limited selection of high-end Japanese whiskeys.
I decide to indulge. And because it is ‘high-end’ and also because it seemed at first like a cocktail was not going to be possible, I give myself fully to the enjoyment of it. I linger long over each tiny sip and circle my glass gently between sips, watching the amber liquid swirl around the one large ball of ice that forms a mound in the center of the short, wide glass. There is definitely something to be said for the more costly when it comes to whiskey. And sushi too, I was about to discover.
O Ya turns out to be about the size of Benevento’s in the North End where I dined the previous night. O Ya exudes a hip, understated elegance with stylishly simple décor, dark wood bar and tables, exposed brick wall behind the sushi bar, and low lighting. The sushi bar forms a flipped L shape with the short end of it being on the narrow end of the restaurant immediately to the left of the entry.
I’m seated on the end with my back to the door, a prime viewing spot for the team of white-clad Japanese artists meticulously preparing the creations, as well as the patrons enjoying it.
Like most sushi restaurants, the nigiri sushi (thin slices of fish that sit atop oval rice balls) comes in twos, with a price ranging from $8 to $38 dollars a pair. There is also a sashimi list, just the fish slices with the chef’s special preparation, and then some more substantial dishes on the back of the menu. I rarely order entrees even at traditional restaurants because I simply want to taste everything.
For the next hour and half, I use my narrow paper menu like a worksheet, marking it with my pen while engaging in frequent consults with my server on the most recommended items on the menu—and casually checking out the deliveries to other diners.
Each time one of my creations arrives, I experience it with my eyes and nose first like a fine wine. I then photograph it (with no flash so as not to disturb the ecstatic trances of other diners), give my palate to it fully, and develop anxiety over the prospect of ordering anything different because I am certain that this has to be the best thing on the menu and that I should order it again.
Scottish Salmon Belly with Cilantro, Ginger, Hot Sesame Oil Drizzle
Tiny Maine Lobster Legs, White Sturgeon Cafiar, Tomalley Aioli
I don’t know if O Ya touts their offering as being molecular gastronomy, but I have eaten at several restaurants that do, and this was that on steroids.
Fried Kumamoto Oyster, Yuzu Kosho Aioli, Squid Ink Bubbles
I watch as the chefs create each masterpiece with the precise focus of a skilled surgeon, using tiny implements, torches and chopsticks to prepare what I can only describe as culinary ecstasy, multi-layered refined flavor profiles that blend in such profound ways that your palate experiences a flourishing re-birth with every encounter. O Ya is a gastronomic renaissance.
Between sushi arrivals, I update my friends by text: This is better than sex.
They text back their laughs. And my friend, Marjorie, texts, Make-up sex with Boston?
O. YA. I reply. I might need a cigarette. (And I’ve never smoked.)
After engaging in my gastro orgy with six uniquely exquisite creations, I pass on dessert. But I’m treated anyway, with some of the most intriguingly presented and flavored chocolate truffles that were ever imagined. These chocolates somehow manage to encompass all of what is memorable about Japanese flavors that make sense to put into a sweet treat—including the essence of a superior blend of green tea. I lived in Japan for two years and it all comes rushing back to me now with the mere sinking of my teeth into these chocolates.
I tweet a photograph and a message that reads: Someone please send me a sleeping bag to O Ya Sushi in Boston. I am never leaving.
But, alas, I do leave…after paying a check that totals twice my weekly grocery bill. And I will do it again on my next visit to Boston, which could very well be a one-night stay just to indulge in another rapturous rendezvous with the extraordinary O Ya.
The Craveable South 
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