Blue Fin

          Blue Fin is a Sushi restaurant located in the Japanese food court of the Porter Exchange Building at Lesley College. The food court consists of mostly fast food type places (small, cash only, no bar), and Blue Fin is the exception – a sit down restaurant, with a full bar, and later hours. We walked in at 9pm on a Friday night hoping to grab a quick bite, but the smaller places were closed. We ended up at Blue Fin and were pleasantly surprised (although I would not have been surprised at all, if I had done my research ahead of time). After dinner, I checked out the website, and saw that Blue Fin is affiliated with Oga’s in Natick, which is one of the best sushi restaurants in the Boston area.

        We started with the avocado salad, which was excellent and unlike any I’ve had before. It included the traditional components: diced avocado, spicy mayo, shredded crabmeat, and fish roe. The thing that was unusual was that the avocado salad was served on top of a mixed green salad, but it worked really well. My only complaint was that we’d ordered the salmon avocado salad and they mixed up the order, but we enjoyed what we got and never mentioned it.

          For our main course, we shared three rolls: one spider maki, one sweet potato maki, and one specialty maki with raw tuna, tempura flakes, eel sauce, and spicy mayo. These were all delicious, but I was most impressed by the spider maki. It was the biggest I’ve ever seen, and included a whole soft-shell crab (most include only a claw or two). The crab was extremely fresh, and cooked fried perfectly.

          The meal at Blue Fin was outstanding, and I left wondering why I’d never tried it before. I tend to group sushi into three categories – the high end with truffles, fois gras, and caviar (there are only two of these places in Boston), cheaper takeout places that are good for the price, and everything else. I’ve had a couple of favorites in the "everything else" category for several years now, but after trying Blue Fin, it has moved to the top of that list.