Naked Tchopstix

I don’t know if it was because it had been so hot or what, but lately I am craving sushi.  And we needed somewhere that had a wide enough menu to make the kids happy too (meaning, they have not developed their true love of sushi.  Yet.)  A friend of mine really likes Naked Tchopstix so we thought we would give it a try.  

They certainly meet the criteria of a large menu—our server came back like 4 times before we were ready to order—and even then I didn’t feel like I had enough time to really read through everything.  They have a lot of sushi and Japanese food, but they also have a lot of other things—Korean, Thai, Chinese etc.  Everything from soups to noodles to rice dishes. 

We settled on trying their tuna tartare ($9.99) because in many places it is one of my favorite things, so I always want to try it somewhere else.  This one was different from most in that it was more like the tuna mix that is used in rolls that list “spicy tuna” as an ingredient.  It is more of a finely chopped mix of the tuna mixed with spicy mayo—it isn’t the large raw pieces of Ahi that are my favorite thing.  So it was this “spicy tuna” mix combined with mango and tobiko (fish eggs) with deep fried wontons on the side to eat them with.  There seemed to be a sweet sauce on top as well. This one wasn’t for me—I guess I like either a soy based sauce or an acid based sauce with something like this.  And something about just scooping up the prepared tuna made me think of canned tuna fish.  I don’t mind it inside a roll as much along with other ingredients, but just eating it straight up like this seemed strange. Hubby liked it better than I did.

We also got two rolls. Again, we were having a hard time deciding because there are a lot of choices.  I like there to be some contrasting flavors in a roll—something with some crunch or texture as well as something creamy (either the fish or the sauce). I am also always partial to a roll that includes avocado.  The first one that grabbed my eye was the corona roll ($10.99). It included avocado, more of the spicy tuna (I didn’t realize they were going to have the same ingredients), and tempura chips and was topped with white tuna and lime.  It had a light wasabi mayo sauce as well.  I really liked this.  It had a nice citrusy flavor and wasn’t overly sweet.  I personally like a crunch from something tempura in my roll and the little chips did the trick.  The white tuna was pretty tender.  I like the flavor from the lime on top, but ended up picking most of them off because I just don’t like chewing on the skin of the lime slice, even when it is really thinly sliced.  This roll was the best thing we had.

The other roll was the Tokyo roll ($12.99) which had eel, avocado and crab inside and tuna and spicy mayo on the outside as well as various flavors of roe. It normally comes with cucumber inside as well, but cucumber isn’t our favorite thing in sushi, so we had them leave it out.  That is probably not a good idea because it probably gives it the extra crunch that the roll needed.  It was good, but nothing that I would crave again.  The ingredients were good, and the tuna on the outside was nice and fresh, but it just didn’t wow me for anything.  The corona roll was much more memorable.

We also shared a small order of frites ($4.99) with the kids, which seemed like a weird thing to get at a place like this, but they wanted them, so we tried them.  They are pretty good—the really thin kind that were nice and hot and crispy.  They served them with 4 different sauces—all things that I think they are using in their other food items—a teriyaki type sauce, a sweet chili oil, a spicy mayo and a wasabi mayo.  Honestly, none of the sauces were really necessary—the frites were fine on their own.  I am guessing these are on the menu for the late night Broad Ripple bar scene.  But the kids liked them.  The kids split a chicken teriyaki dinner ($11.99) which they were fine with but my daughter informed me the all white meat was “a little dry.” I had one quick bite and would say she was right about that.

All in all, I would say this is a good place to go to meet a sushi craving, even though there are other places that I like better.  They do have a nice wide-ranging menu though to appeal to many different tastes.  So what have other people had non-sushi wise that they really like? Or do you have a favorite roll there?

Naked Tchopstix

6253 N. College Ave.

Indy 46220

317/252-5555

www.tchopstix.com (why do restaurants not put prices on their websites?)