The Volcano Roll at Blue Fish House

Justine Schmider

By "American" sushi, I am specifically referring to sushi and maki rolls and nigiri, etc., etc., that are inflected by Western tastes and influences. (So, I guess, basically anything at Japanese restaurant that involves liberal amounts of cream cheese). The happy hour menu at Blue Fish House provides more than a decent selection, but I still found myself spurning some of the bargains in favor of a few pricier over-the-top maki rolls.

Among these was the Volcano Roll (HH $8.50; regularly $12.25), a hand roll stuffed with cream cheese, avocado, shrimp, and cucumbers and doused in BFH's "famous sauce." The combination of cheese, cucumber, shrimp, and white rice by themselves might have made this roll taste like a Japanese version of the Victorian tea sandwich, but the addition of avocado and the spicy mayonnaise sauce (with the slightest hints of cheddar) transformed the Volcano Roll into a delicious Far Eastern Burrito.

While the Volcano Roll is hardly complex in flavor, it certainly satisfied my craving for unsophisticated "American" sushi, and the excess sauce proved a useful dressing for my comparatively plainer California roll.