Sushivogue opens in Woodbury

Valley Stream native Tommy Yeh intended to stay just one year when he, his wife and two children moved to Taiwan. The kids could learn Chinese and his wife could reconnect with her family, whom she’d moved away from to study in the States. They ended up staying for nine years, during which time Yeh, who’s been in restaurants his whole life, decided to open what he termed an American-style sushi joint, by which he meant a place that served a wide variety of rolls using ingredients both traditional and non-. He called it Sushivogue. Such was its popularity that Yeh appeared a few times on national television there.

Last year, after his landlord refused to renew the eatery’s lease, Yeh wondered if it might be time to return to Long Island. "My dad was telling me there were a lot of opportunities, since so many restaurants closed during the pandemic," he recalled. One of those restaurants happened to be a sushi place, the Woodbury location of Nikkei of Peru. After he and his family came back to the U.S. last fall, Yeh decided to resurrect Sushivogue there. "We liked the area and it seemed like a good place to start." The restaurant opened May 17.

Exhaustive is too weak a word to describe Yeh’s menu, which lists dozens of rolls featuring more than 100 ingredients combined in what feels like thousands of ways. There are rolls with localized names like Jericho (spicy yellowtail, white tuna and jalapeño, $7), cute names like Charlie Brown (coconut shrimp, cucumber wrapped with purple rice, mango, seared scallops, peanuts, $17) and Aquaman (spicy tuna, guacamole, jalapeño, spicy salmon and Doritos crumbs, $16); and at least one name that seems, uh, unartful — Pearl Harbor (shrimp, lobster salad, fried oyster and avocado, $17). And while the names might not all be tasteful, the sushi almost always is.

Said Yeh: "Right now, our most popular rolls are the Triple Crown"--tuna, salmon, yellowtail with bluefin toro and wasabi salsa, $18 — and the Woodbury" — king crab, cucumber, seaweed salad, lobster salad, avocado and red caviar, $17. But don’t overlook the $16 Cherry Blossom Uni, a sea urchin concoction that has "green tea noodles and Japanese yam topped with a mint-based soy sauce" or the $16 Sushi Burrito — "we stuff sushi inside, like spicy crab and salmon."

What if you don’t like sushi? Well, then you probably won’t wander into a place called Sushivogue. But if you do, there are five soups, eight salads and 16 hot appetizers, and probably many more things I’ve forgotten.

Sushivogue is at 8063 Jericho Tpke. in Woodbury, 516-588-9900, sushivogue.com. Opening hours are Monday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., Saturday from 12:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and Sunday from 12:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

By Scott Vogel

scott.vogel@newsday.com

Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.