Skip to main contentLunch 11:30 am-1:30 pm Thursday-Friday, dinner 5:30-9:30 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 5:30-10 pm Friday-Saturday, 5:30-9 pm Sunday. $$ Moderate.
[SUSHI] If an outing to Lake Oswego holds any appeal, Kurata ought to figure in the itinerary. This tiny sushi place has only eight tables inside (plus a few outside for when the weather cooperates). What it lacks in space it makes up for in expansive menu options. That includes everything one might expect at a Japanese restaurant: green salad with ginger dressing, chilled goma-ae soaked in a soy-sesame sauce, shrimp shu mai, a wide variety of nigiri (including surprising choices like red snapper), sushi donburi (basically pieces of nigiri piled on top of a bowl of rice), vegetable tempura, chicken teriyaki and soba noodles. It's the side dishes and unique rolls that elevate the restaurant to the level of warranting a special trip. Japanese eggplant fried in oil and seasoned with a slightly sweet sauce will travel to your mouth as quickly as fresh popcorn. The Kurata roll—tuna with spicy sauce, tamago, avocado and flying-fish eggs—will then fill you up, making a stroll around the actual lake in Lake Oswego (down the street and to the right) a must. BETH SLOVIC.
Ideal meal: The L.O. roll has eel, avocado, tamago and flying-fish eggs. Pair it with one of the specials or a seaweed salad and a Sapporo.
Best deal: The asparagus maki for $7.95 looks like a sushi roll with thin-sliced beef instead of rice. It tastes like its own well-contained meal.
WWeek 2015