What was Blue Wasabi Sushi & Martini Bar?
Blue Wasabi Sushi & Martini Bar was Scottsdale’s homegrown answer to the party-sushi formula: rolls with jokes for names, martinis in colors, a patio and a room with levels to see and be seen from. Its last Scottsdale home was Suite 108 at 6137 N Scottsdale Road, in The Shops at Hilton Village, the center on the east side of Scottsdale Road between McDonald and Lincoln drives, across from The Borgata on the Central Scottsdale side of the Paradise Valley line.
The owner was Jim Moran, an avid cyclist whose menus included gluten-free sushi. Phoenix New Times dated the brand’s original location to DC Ranch, at Market Street, from 2004 to 2009, and Arizona Foothills Magazine noted the company’s eighth anniversary in February 2012. A Gilbert restaurant at SanTan Village followed in 2008, which made Blue Wasabi, for a while, a trio. When the Hilton Village location opened is not recorded in the press we found; it was serving by September 2010.
What it sold was personality. The wasabi was tinted blue. The rolls were called Eating Nemo, Shrimp Bizkit, Get Clucked, the Dam Jumper, the Marilyn Roll, and eventually the Chuck Norris Roll. The drink was the Berry White, a blueberry vodka martini that PhoenixBites called the most popular drink on the menu. By 2012 you ordered from an iPad menu with a photo of every dish.
It was for the Hilton resort’s guests and the neighborhoods on both sides of the line, and for groups who wanted sushi to be a night out rather than a meal. The Hilton Village bar closed in February 2013; TapHouse Kitchen took the space the next spring. Our verdict: a fun, well-liked local imitation of a national trend, which closed because the trend had moved on and the chain was too small to move with it.
What the menu and the room were
The rolls. The menu was long and built around specialty rolls. In September 2010, PhoenixBites priced the Dam Jumper (spicy krab, avocado and cucumber rolled in salmon, with sriracha and ponzu) at $12.75 and the Marilyn Roll (sashimi tuna, yellowtail and salmon with spicy tuna, krab mix, avocado and cucumber, in pink soy paper) at $14.75, the crowd favorite. That month the bar ran a name-our-roll contest and launched Swimming with the Fishes, $13.50: snow crab and asparagus topped with salmon sashimi, spinach pesto and balsamic glaze. By 2012 Arizona Foothills was recommending the Tropic Thunder (panko shrimp, spicy crab and avocado under shrimp and pineapple salsa), the Marco Rolo with jalapeño and roasted tomatoes, and the new Chuck Norris Roll with spicy salmon, salmon sashimi, lemon and togarashi.
The rest of the menu. Starters included macadamia-nut chicken and crab wontons with an apple-plum sauce. Dessert was a Chocolate Rainbow Roll of vanilla ice cream and chocolate ganache under fresh fruit. Moran’s own order, in a 2013 fitness profile, was a sashimi platter of tuna, salmon and yellowtail with spring greens, avocado and asparagus.
The drinks. The Berry White (Smirnoff Blueberry, blueberry-infused sweet and sour and white cranberry juice) outsold everything, and it was half price at happy hour. The Agent Orange, with Absolut Mandarin, triple sec and orange, tangerine and pineapple juices, was the one the bartender said men ordered most.
The room. Arizona Foothills described sushi with a nightlife edge: a sleek design, multiple dining levels and a patio good for people-watching. The menus came on iPads by 2012, a novelty at the time. The record we found does not give Blue Wasabi’s hours.
The local chain that rode party sushi and then got off
Blue Wasabi belongs to a particular Scottsdale moment. RA Sushi had opened in Old Town in 1997 and turned sushi into a happy-hour sport; Stingray Sushi followed on Scottsdale Road in 2003. Blue Wasabi, starting at DC Ranch in 2004, carried the same idea north and then south: loud names, sweet martinis, a patio, a room that was half bar. It was locally launched, and for most of the 2000s that was enough.
The record of its decline is short and clear. The DC Ranch original closed in 2009, in the depth of the recession. The Gilbert location at SanTan Village, opened in 2008, stayed open. And in February 2013, the Hilton Village bar closed; New Times opened its report with “And then there was one.” No reason was given in print. A Gilbert paper later wrote that Moran could now focus solely on the Gilbert restaurant. The Blue Wasabi name stayed on the shopping list at SanTan Village.
The space moved on quickly. Tasty Brand Holdings opened TapHouse Kitchen there in spring 2014, a craft-beer gastropub with chef Patrick Karvis and a beer pairing for every dish. That restaurant had its own long, complicated run in the suite, which our TapHouse Kitchen guide covers.
Honest assessment: nobody would call Blue Wasabi a serious sushi bar, and it did not claim to be one. It was a good-time room with an iPad menu and a blueberry martini, run by a local owner rather than a national group, and it kept a nightlife room going at Hilton Village for several years. When diners in the 2010s started looking for omakase counters and craft beer instead of pink soy paper, there was no second act for it in Scottsdale, and the owner, sensibly, went where the business still was.