Tanpopo restaurant offers Aggies a taste of Japan
A dandelion doesn’t seem too appetizing, but Tanpopo, the Japanese word for it, sure does.
Tanpopo is a Japanese restaurant in Logan where the main calling card is sushi.
Verl Murphy, the owner of the store, said sushi contributes close to 50 percent of the restaurant’s revenue and is an important part of his business. He said he started a happy hour to concentrate on it more.
Murphy said for college students happy hour is the best deal because they can get a variety of rolls without having to buy a lot of sushi. A roll will come with two to four pieces. He said mostly college students come in during happy hour.
Happy Hour is Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and everything on the menu is $2 during that time.
The word sushi actually means rice and vinegar, Murphy said. Everything that is added to that is also called sushi, but it isn’t necessarily raw fish – in fact, most everything is cooked, he said.
All sushi is served with wasabi, which is the Japanese version of horseradish, and gari, which is pickled ginger, he said.
“Everyone is so paranoid that they’re going to get something raw,” Murphy said, but noted the key is in how all the food is handled, prepared and stored.
He said he and his cooks are very aware of fish and its qualities and problems.
“We’re careful about it,” Murphy said. “We always serve fresh food. If it’s even questionable, it will be cooked, but if it doesn’t look good, it won’t make it [out of the kitchen].
“I have no problem saying no one will ever be sick in my restaurant,” Murphy said. “And you’ll never be sick from my sushi – I can tell you that.”
Murphy said all of his seafood is bought whole from Pacific Seafood in Salt Lake City, which is based in Portland, Ore. He said he picks up his fish once a week in Salt Lake City.
The food is all healthy and that is because Japanese food is healthy, he said. The Japanese live longer as a whole than other people, he said, with more people over the age of 100 than any other country in the world.
Those who don’t speak Japanese may have a hard time ordering at Tanpopo, but asking the waiter what something means is always an option.
Some of the dishes include nigiri, which is a ball of rice with some sort of fish on top. The choices for the fish are salmon, tuna, octopus and shrimp.
Gyoza is hamburger, cabbage, green onions and spices all wrapped in won-ton-like wraps.
Murphy said they use a lot of tofu because it is healthy. For tofu, there is the age-dashi-tofu, which is wrapped in cornstarch.
Other dishes are tonkatsu, which is breaded pork and teriyaki-beef-don – don is a bowl of rice – served with tempura onion rings.
In the sushi world, the most popular is the dragon roll, Murphy said. Another is the fat roll, which has tuna, salmon, snapper (izumidai) and imitation crab. Fat rolls are harder to eat in one piece, he said.
For some rolls, after it is made, they will dip it in tempura batter then it is fried just long enough to cook the batter, he said. Every sushi restaurant has similar rolls, such as the California roll. The California roll is covered in rice, sesame seed and seaweed.
Murphy said besides the regular soy sauce, they have different dipping sauces for the sushi. One of the favorites is the spicy mayo.
“You’ll love it,” Murphy said. “You’ll be addicted.”
He won’t give up the recipe. He said people think it is fry sauce when they hear it has mayo in it, but he said it definitely isn’t. He said he hates ketchup and it isn’t allowed in the building.
Another popular sauce is the eel sauce, he said. The reason it is called eel sauce is because they used to use eel to make it. Now they use chicken and Murphy said it has hardly changed. They still use it on eel rolls.
Everything in Japan is bite-sized to eat it with chopsticks, he said.
“Japanese don’t mind having their mouths jam-packed until they can’t talk,” Murphy said.
Murphy said Japanese people care about two things: quality of taste and the visual aspect. He said the visual side is equally as important as the taste.
“If it doesn’t look good, it won’t taste good,” Murphy said.
He said his favorite thing to eat at the restaurant is the sushi.
“I love sushi. I’d take a plate of raw fish over a steak any day,” Murphy said. “It’s healthy.”
Kellison Platero, the main cook and an undeclared sophomore at USU. said he really likes the food at Tanpopo.
His favorite dish is Gabe-don, which was an accident made by a cook named Gabe. He said his favorite sushi is shrimp tempura.
The restaurant has four different menus. They have the dinner menu, lunch menu, happy hour menu and an all-you-can-eat menu.
Every last Monday of the month is all-you-can-eat sushi night for $19.95.
“It’s a night of horror for us,” Murphy said. “If you want to come that night – come early.”
He said 15-20 minutes after the restaurant opens, there is a line of people that goes into the parking lot.
Murphy said people can order all they want, but warns not to order too much. People don’t realize how much they are actually going to get when they order. He said he hates seeing food go to waste.
“The hardest thing for me to do is throw food away,” Murphy said. “If they don’t eat it, that’s money down the drain.”
Ten years ago, Tanpopo opened in Smithfield, but moved because they didn’t have enough business there, he said. They moved to their new location at 55 W. 1000 North #1 in Logan in January of 1998. Murphy said they already need a larger building and will eventually have to move into one.
He said he and his wife, who is Japanese, started the restaurant together. All of the recipes are hers and although she does not currently work there, at first she was the main employee.
The Murphys have trained all of their own chefs. Ben Ogilvie, a sushi chef, who is also a certified massage therapist, said making sushi appeals to his meticulous nature.
Ogilvie has worked at Tanpopo since October and said he loves to work there because it is fun and he likes the food.
The restaurant serves all authentic Japanese food and everything is made in the store.
“We’re as authentic as anything you’re going to get in Utah,” Murphy said.
Private booths are available with reservations where patrons can take off their shoes and sit with their legs crossed.
-hollyadams@cc.usu.edu