Deconstructed: Spaghetti ai Uni at Sanjusan

In 2020, Tokyo alone had more than 20,000 Italian restaurants, which speaks to Japan’s fascination with Italian cooking. We are lucky to have even one in Minneapolis that plays to both Japanese and Italian cuisines with skill and creativity.

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Chef x 2

Sanjusan represents a partnership between chefs Daniel del Prado and Shigeyuki Furukawa. The restaurant emerged last year on the street level of Kado no Mise in North Loop. Upstairs, the traditional Japanese kaiseki meals continue, while the restaurant downstairs cranks out pizzas, pastas, yakitori, and small plates.

Itameshi

The Japanese term referring to authentic Italian cuisine has been in use since before the 1920s. But it has evolved over the years, with the ebb and flow of cultural eating, and is now widely assumed to mean any Italian food that has been prepared with Japanese technique or ingredients.

Briny and Rich

The Spaghetti ai Uni at Sanjusan is a wafu spaghetti. While seafood pasta might be authentic to Italy, this dish takes a tangle of toothy al dente pasta and combines it with snow crab and a cream sauce made from uni, or sea urchin. It’s both briny and rich with that deep umami earthiness that sets it apart. The bread crumbs on the side add a fun crunch when you drag your noodles through ’em.

The Isaac Becker Pizza

Del Prado pays homage to a third chef in the North Loop—who also happens to be his mentor—with this signature pizza he first created while working at Becker’s Burch Steak. The pizza sports spicy raw tuna and cilantro, giving it a touch of sushi pedigree.

Twists and Boosts

The typical tomato bread salad, known as panzanella here, gets a boost from avocado and bonito (dried fish flakes) mayo. Fried calamari is given a twist using light and airy tempura batter and a bright shiso (a Japanese herb) vinegar.

Sake

What to wash it all down with? There are great wines and cocktails, but adding a bottle of sake rice wine to the meal brings beautiful balance. Try the Asamai Hyosho “Diamond Dust,” which is a junmai ginjo usunigori sake: a slightly cloudy and light sake that’s great with seafood.