Cheap Eats, of the fishy variety

What: Sake Cafe

Where: 774 Park Ave., Bloomfield, CT

When: lunch- 11:30am-3:00pm daily

happy hour- 3-5:30pm Mon-Thurs

By now you've seen the giant bus advertisements and received coupons in the mail in those weird Valupak things, and probably thought about how fucking ridiculous the slogan "More sake, more happy!" is. Well, you'd be right. But you'd be wrong to avoid The Sake Cafe on bizarre marketing alone. Not only do they have grrrrrreat specials, but the food is excellent, and hey, there's usually no one in there!

(I still have no camera, here's a picture of some generic sushi)

I've now been twice, once for the lunch special and once for the happy hour There are various nicely priced lunch options; my lunch companion and I both went for the Lunch Roll Combo: $9.95 for miso soup, house salad and 2 rolls. I had an avocado roll and a spicy tuna roll, both delish. As we were the only people in there, the chef sent us an amazing shrimp tempura thing on the house. I usually don't order anything fancy, so I was pleasantly surprised by this ornate, multi-ingredient sushi delight. Happy hour went similarly, they have single pieces of (nigiri?) sushi for 99-cents or rolls (maki?) for $3. This time I had a tempura sweet potato roll and a salmon roll, and tried a piece of my LC's tuna. (That's what she said.) We also tried some deliciously fruity $4 martinis. I am obviously no food writer, but I can tell you that this place is awesome, the food is good, the service is kinda awkward but endearing, and the price is right. I can only hope this place is totally hoppin' on a Friday night, because its a ghost town during the weekdays (go figure). Some Yelpers had good things to say about their Hibachi action too, but that's a little out of my recession budget. Maybe someday...