Ulah Bistro has several things going for it: a wood-burning pizza oven, a great view of Ben’s Chili Bowl, and a solid beer program.
As I sipped my draft of Bell’s Amber Wheat ($5.75), I decided to create a highlight film of this meal posted on donrockwell.com.
It’s not at all intuitive to order an Ahi Tuna Tartare ($12) here, but if you didn’t, you’d be missing out on a great rendition of this long-since-trite (can we call it “classic?”) dish. A huge cylindrical mash of chunks of tuna loin, served with Asian seaweed salad with orange-sesame dressing, and squirted with wasabi aioli – it’s a lot of tuna for $12 which might at first seem like too much money for this appetizer. Get this.
After the tuna, I was pretty sure the Fried Cod Sandwich ($11) would be a hit, but I was wrong. The battered filet of cod comes on a braided mini-challah loaf, with caper aioli and a tomato salad which sounds good, but the fish itself was exceedingly dry – normally, when you flake cod, each section glistens with moisture, but this had more of a dry-fiber look to it, and the batter itself could have used a bit more seasoning. Throw in the standard-issue frozen bistro fries as a side, and you have a dish that was a slight miss for me – not bad, but I’ll try a pizza next time.