Kona Jack's - Revisit

So the other night we were trying to figure out a place that we could meet everyone in my family’s random cravings at the moment and decided to give Kona Jack’s another try for dinner. We have been there for dinner a long time ago, way before blogging and I have reviewed it before for lunch (and have been a few other times for lunch as well).   And if you saw my post about the fish market, you will see it is a place I frequent quite a bit, even if not for a meal there (most of the fish that we cook at home comes from Kona Jack’s).

I wanted sushi-ish kind of food and went with a couple things from that part of the menu—the tuna tartare (have I mentioned that I have a slight addiction to good tuna tartar?) ($12) and the shrimp tempura roll ($9).  The tuna tartar was just how I liked it—lightly seasoned with soy, ginger, green onions, fine shreds of radish and cilantro.  They served it with crispy wonton chips.  It was a lot like my all time favorite tartar from H2O Sushi, only a larger dice of fish.  The fish was impeccably fresh (as you would hope from such a place). It is a pretty generous portion and even though hubby ate some of it, I didn’t finish it all.

I enjoyed the roll too—I just wanted something simple and fairly small since I was getting the tartar.  It fit the bill well—it was shrimp tempura and avocado wrapped in soy paper (which is how I tend to prefer it and how they serve this roll) with a drizzle of “kona” sauce and a drizzle of eel sauce.  The kona sauce was like a spicy mayo and the eel sauce is a slightly sweet soy-based sauce.  There was just enough of it for each piece and I liked that the pieces were not so big that it was hard to eat in one bite.  The bad part of my meal, which carried through a lot of the evening, was that the service was pretty slow. Our server was super nice and apologetic, but the food took quite a long time to get. Unfortunately, this left the tempura shrimp a little less than crunchy. The rolls would have been so much better if we had gotten them immediately after they were made.

Unfortunately, this was true for hubby and my son’s dinner as well, which was a surf and turf combo with filet and king crab legs ($45) (they split it).  The steak was actually really pretty good considering it’s a seafood place, and was perfectly medium rare, which was also pretty amazing considering it had sat a little too long too I think.  The crab, which they cut in half length-wise, was a little dried out because of this as well.  Not that this stopped my son from eating every bite (hubby had to fight him to get some of it).  It also came with a soup or salad and hubby got the clam chowder.  It was pretty good clam chowder and I am kind of particular about clam chowder.  Way too many large hunks of carrot for my taste, but the flavor was good—not too runny with some nice chunks of clam and potato.

Overall, the meal was disappointing because of the fact that it took so long and so clearly had been sitting a little too long before it got served to us.  If it had been delivered quickly, it probably would have been a really good meal (especially for me—I really liked the flavors of what I ordered). The restaurant was really busy, but when I asked if that was unusual we were told, no, not really.  And when I have been in at lunch time, it always seems to have a decent crowd so I think they are fairly used to being busy. We did stop at the fish market on our way out a pick up some nice trout that we had for dinner the following night, which turned out quite well if I do say so myself.  We will certainly return at some point, but not sure I will get hubby back there for awhile anyway. 

Kona Jack’s

9419 North Meridian Street

Indy   46260

317/843-1609

www.konajacksindy.com