Restaurant Review - Geisha House: Japanese dream

Four young women sit at one of the lipstick-red plush banquettes at Geisha House, the newest Atlantic Station confection from the Dolce Group, and commiserate about the sad state of dating in Marietta.

“It’s like, if you go out in Marietta, you can meet guys but not any who don’t already know who you are. There’s nothing new there,” the pretty brunette says to the überblonde. “You have to come to Atlanta to be whatever you want to be.”

Her comment couldn’t be more appropriate in the surroundings. The restaurant might be better named Harajuku House – the vibe much better captures role-playing experimentation and the crazy Tokyo fashion of the Harajuku girl than the restrained beauty of a geisha. Geisha House is a lot of things – striking, outrageous, the stuff of fantasy. With its deep-red and black color scheme, gold accents and massive portraits of sexily benevolent Asian women’s faces overlooking cartoonish lounges, it’s a place to come play a role, that of a young, gorgeous, successful Atlantan. It’s a place to lose touch with reality.

As if on cue, the waiter arrives at the girls’ table. “Wanna do some shots with me?” he asks, handing out a round of nuclear-colored shot glasses. My husband and I look at each other grumpily. This is a Geisha House tradition we had been initiated to on our last trip, the “Fun Shot.” Waiters, seemingly spontaneously, bring the table a round of shots, and do one themselves. The novelty becomes a little tarnished when you realize it’s a gimmick and you aren’t actually a uniquely treasured customer (it will appear on your bill, with no charge, labeled Fun Shot), but even more so when you come back and all the tables around you get the treatment, but you’re left out. Our role-playing must have not been as convincing the second time around.

Here’s the thing: If you can get past the garish strips of red lights when you enter, which are indubitably impressive but do such a trick on your eyes that it might leave you queasy, you’ll find that there is some undeniably cool food to be had here. It’s not a place for a serious eater looking for earnest food, but if modern Japanese fashion were to be translated into the language of food, it might tell a Geisha House kind of tale. As is custom in the ancient art of trendy Japanese food in American restaurants, small plates are all-pervading.

Your waiter will no doubt regale you with the virtues of the nibbly appetizer plate of shishito peppers, a green pepper with a mild spice and a smoky aftertaste. You should resist the urge to resist – I, too, hate the up-sell – and get a plate of them. They are highly addictive, perfect cocktail accompaniments. Unfortunately, the cocktails here all fall into the melted-Popsicle category, but a satisfying sake list saves the day.

Geisha House’s menu is full of ridiculous little dishes that are pure fun. Uni shooters? The sea urchin is served in a shot glass full of briny sake, and the shot is finished off with crunchy scallions. It’s the height of silliness. It’s also delicious. Bypass a list of common robata-yaki, (or yaki-tori: stuff grilled on a stick), and go for the cherry tomatoes wrapped in bacon. The bacon is wonderfully fatty, and the warm tomatoes burst in your mouth, countering the meaty smoke with sweet juice. Tempura rock shrimp could have come straight from a Calabash fish camp – this is no light tempura batter – but they tasted hot, fried, sweet and crispy, so who’s complaining?

Even when it comes to sushi, the frivolous stuff is best. The red samurai roll combines spicy tuna with avocado and serrano peppers, but the secret is a yuzu-infused vinaigrette that gives it a fresh, clean finish. I wasn’t as big a fan of the hand rolls or rice wraps. Geisha House for some reason avoids using nori, the seaweed usually used for rolling sushi rolls, and opts instead for soy or rice paper. I missed the balancing savory crunch of the nori.

And there are some places where the expertise in the kitchen can’t keep up with the delicacy of the cuisine. The black cod marinated in miso was overcooked on our first visit, but the buttery fish overcame and still satisfied. On the second visit it was so cooked it was hard to pull the fish apart, and all that was left of the buttery texture had turned to an oily whisper.

Grilled lamb chops were cooked and spiced well, but the cold dipping sauce disappointed. In fact, I wasn’t a fan of most of the dipping sauces, which come with many dishes here. Creamy, sweet, salty, but rarely adding much to the plate, they are often best ignored.

You can also ignore most of the desserts. They do have a good mochi, which are balls of flavored rice paste filled with ice cream. I don’t know why they call it Hawaiian mochi, which, as I understand it, is quite different from the Japanese kind. But whatever, it’s a fun and cleansing way to end a meal.

Geisha House may be slightly confusing visually, more than a little over-the-top in design and concept, and lacking in some of its culinary endeavors. But it’s fun through and through, if you can stomach the artifice. It’s also by far the most successful of these Atlantic Station caverns of theme at pulling off the fantasy. You might just be satisfied.