Sono Bana Japanese Restaurant, formerly Hama, has been one of my favorite Connecticut restaurants for going on twenty-five years.
Although the name changed a few years ago, the management has not. The self-effacing but widely respected Seisan Muto is still the man.
Located at the corner of Dixwell and Putnam Avenues in an unprepossessing row of shops, Sono Bana is easy to overlook, especially considering all of the gaudy signs further north for “all you can eat” sushi, “two for one” sushi deals, and the like. And these several restaurants may be perfectly fine. But of all foods, is sushi the one you want to purchase at bargain basement prices?
Maybe the tactics of its competition are why Sono Bana felt compelled to put its own colorful sign up in the window showing its food.
Pictures of the food are not normally the greatest cause for optimism when visiting a restaurant, but in Sono Bana’s case, you can’t go wrong no matter what you order.
There’s a reason I see more Japanese visitors at Sono Bana than at any other Japanese restaurant. There’s a reason the owners of other Japanese restaurants can be counted among its customers. And there’s a reason the restaurant draws a great number of people from the Yale community. To any people who profess to love Japanese food and haven’t found their way there—wake up! Because I rate Sono Bana’s Japanese pitch-perfect kitchen top in Connecticut, and I count its sushi bar among the top five or ten.
There is some street parking in front, but most customers prefer parking in the small lot behind the restaurant or on Helen Street.
An expansion a few years ago eliminated waits for a table most nights. The décor is simple but attractive. This is the seating in the first dining room,
this is the sushi bar,
and this is the additional dining space.
Here is someone’s photograph of the wonderful three-man boat, which a couple of times I have finished without assistance (including a miso soup, green salad and seaweed salad).
Leave such stunts to the professionals—I have a fifth dan black belt in eating.
My date for this Japanese lunch was the lovely Mrs. Cohen, closing in on fifty-six and still a babe.
They say couples grow more to look like one another—if that happens, I will kill myself. Our waitress was named Tutu, I believe.
Like Café Amici, Sono Bana was already offering spectacular mix-and-match menu deals before Hamden Restaurant Week was ever considered. It was a simple matter to take great values and make them even better. Follow the beautiful absurdity of what I and my better half received for $12 apiece.
Tutu started us off with cups of green tea.
There were two “appetizers,” so of course we tried both. One was a nice vegetable summer roll—fresh lettuce, avocado, cucumber and carrot wrapped tightly in rice paper and served with a Thai-style sweet and hot dipping sauce.
Sono Bana was one of the restaurants that heeded my urging to make sure there was a nice vegetarian path through its prix-fixe menu.
But non-vegetarians may want to elect the blue shrimp.
Frankly, Sono Bana could have charged most of the $12 lunch price for this treat alone! These sashimi-style blue shrimp were just slightly cooked and then topped with spicy mayonnaise and black tobiko—a lovely combination. Even more impressive, the heads had been removed and were deep-fried. Sushi aficionados (like me) know that the deep-fried heads of shrimp are every bit as delicious as soft-shell crab.
The “entrée” was the Lunch Box-T on Hama’s regular lunch menu. That may not have conveyed much to newcomers, but to Hamden regulars (like me) it meant they were calling a whole, self-contained meal an entrée, great news for Hamden Restaurant Week diners. I won’t go through all of the possible choices, because it would be an exercise in absurdity. I will just show readers what opportunity my wife and I made of it. We tried not to repeat ourselves, and almost succeeded, except we both wound up with California rolls (other substitutions are permitted).
But before you can even get your Lunch Box-T, you have to choose a miso soup, green salad or seaweed salad. I can vouch for the quality of Sono Bana’s miso soup from visits past, but my wife had the green salad with a refreshing ginger dressing,
while I had the delightful seaweed salad. Lots of “Japanese” restaurants include all these offerings, but Sono Bana gets each exactly right. It’s a matter of perfectionism and authenticity.
Finally, we received our Lunch Box-Ts. We shared both, using our combined orders to allow us to experience as many favorites as possible. So here’s the first:
It included a California roll,
a soba salad of buckwheat noodles with sliced mushroom and sesame dressing,
agedashi dofu (large custard-like tofu cubes dusted with potato or cornstarch and deep-fried until golden brown and then served in a tentsuyu broth),
five pieces of sparklingly fresh sashimi (two tuna, two salmon and one white tuna),
and fresh fruit.
Now here’s the second.
It included another California roll,
wonderful, light, crisply battered shrimp and vegetable tempura (something all too rarely cooked correctly) with a bowl of tentsuyu dipping sauce,
gyoza (meat and vegetable filled dumplings),
teriyaki salmon (again, something too rarely done well) with vegetables, the fish’s skin perfectly crisped, the fish gently cooked and moist, the sauce pleasing rather than cloying,
and again, fresh fruit.
As I said, the box is normally a fully contained meal still supplemented by a soup or salad, but for Hamden Restaurant Week, it came with a choice of appetizers and a dessert in addition to fruit. The two dessert selections included choice of two ice cream flavors (not pictured), green tea and strawberry mochi ice cream (the ice cream has a subtle rice cake wrap so you can actually pick it up in your hand and eat it)
and a crisp, light, deep-fried apple cinnamon roll (and I can tell you from personal experience that it takes talent to make spring rolls that are as tightly rolled and symmetrical as these).
Sono Bana has been around two and a half decades and doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. But a look at the happy faces of its customers reveals what a great dining experience it offers.
Sono Bana Japanese Restaurant, 1206 Dixwell Avenue, 203-281-4542
www.sonobana.com