Gowasabi

Gowasabi aspires to be a Japanese, Korean and health-food restaurant-cum-jazz club, but it comes across as your average neighborhood sushi joint. A recent dinner began with lively house maki rolls, Kamikaze rolls stuffed with spicy tuna and cooling avocado and a Rock & Roll roll that combined crackly salmon skin with broiled eel. But then the place shape-shifted. Sushi assortments proved too dull to be redeemed by extra ginger and wasabi, and the music morphed into Korean bubblegum pop. Come on weekends, when pleasant jazz wafts over the sound system, and the mellow mood is fueled by gingery soju, the sake-strength Korean vodka.