Zama - 19th and Walnut St

Chef Hiroyuki “Zama” Tanaka started his 20 year sushi career by washing knives at a restaurant in the Kanagawa prefecture just outside of Tokyo.  After working his way up the ranks and becoming a sushi chef he immigrated to the states where he served in the kitchens of Morimoto, Pod and Genji.  This is a background you would be hard pressed to find in a city filled with Korean and Chinese run sushi restaurants.  And honestly, when it comes down to it, just like we like our suits to be Italian and electronics to be Apple, we like the idea of an actual chef from Japan being behind a sushi restaurant. There's a certain level of authenticity and inherit quality that we associate with who's making our stuff, whether warented or not.
So here we are at Zama, will the chefs background make a difference?

The dichromatic decor is modern, clean and impressive.  Wood slates cover the walls and line the booths. On the back ceiling there is this beautifully stylized Koi pond made out of dotted lights.  Quite a contrast to what this space looked like when it used to be Loie.

 1) Kurabuta Pork Dumplings - $8.00
Decided on doing something a little different from the usual edamame starter and went with the gyoza.  The topping of ginger and chives gave these a nice bite but there wasn't anything particularly amazing about these dumplings otherwise .  They were fried pretty hard, which I wasn't a fan of, but the pork stuffing was decent [6/10]

 2) Maki Combination - $16.00
Seriously, whats with this freaking plate?  It looks like a hub cap and an ugly one at that.  Plastic and turquoise and giant, it seemed out of place against the wood and black colors that fill the restaurant.
Luckily for this dish, this is not Iron Chef, and I don't give 15 points for plating so how were the rolls?  I would say both in size and quality they were excellent.   I really enjoyed the bite and crunch the jalapenos added in the yellowtail jalapeno mango maki.  [8/10]

 3) Sushi and Sashimi Combination - $24.00
And the underwhelming moment of the day goes to this dish.  The dull, lifeless appearance of the nigiri is not the fault of my iPhone's camera struggling with low light conditions. This really looked like this...They say we eat with our eyes first and what my eyes were eating at this moment was sushi sadness. Luckily, once in my mouth, they weren't as lifeless as I expected but still, this didn't make me feel good about paying $24 for this either. [6/10]

4) Asahi Select - $6.00 / Sapporo Light - $6.00
I really do enjoy the light, crisp, clean tastes of Japanese beer.  Always goes great with sushi.

Overall LTE score [7/10]  I have a hard time scoring these higher end restaurants.  On one hand, the food is good and probably deserving of at least some of the premium you pay but on the other hand you're spending a fortune and you expect to be blown away for it.  Did I enjoy my meal?  Yes.  Would I ever eat here regularly?  Not unless I were able to find a way to have an illegitimate child with Arnold Schwarzenegger. But at the end of the day, I feel like I generally take cost into account less and judge on how much I enjoyed my meal.  In the case of Zama, I left feeling like I had a good meal and the space I ate it in was beautiful.  Was the pedigree of having an accomplished Japanese chef running the kitchen worth the cost?  I didn't find that to be the case with this lunch.

http://www.zamarestaurant.com/