Friday night I drove into Fort Lee for dinner with Twoin, Gar and Esth at Hiura, a sushi place they’ve been raving about. It’s byob, so we picked up a few bottles of sake beforehand. As we took our seats at the sushi bar we mentioned that we wanted to do omakase and Chef Hiura asked to see what bottles of sake we had brought. After examining the labels, he sent his waitress off to bring us little dishes of cocktail onions. Brilliant, considering the sake we had selected did in fact have a hint of sweetness which the cocktail onions paired quite well with. Then the parade of fish began, starting with sashimi. We were given toro, kampachi, fluke, octopus, squid, clam and mackerel. All were great, but the toro was slightly frozen although of very high quality. My favorite of the bunch was the mackerel which the chef said was from Japan. It was more subtle and a little less oily than the Norwegian variety I love, but still had an amazingly clean richness. Next up, we were each served a tiny cup of rice topped with fantastic fresh ikura and super sweet uni. This was the only place other than Hajime where I’ve had ikura that good. Then we had several courses of sushi, all superbly fresh, my favorite probably being the giant clam we were served last, with a crisp texture, sweet flavor and perfectly accented with a squeeze of lemon juice. All told, this was every bit as good as Sushi Yasuda, which is my favorite place for straightforward sashimi and sushi. Sushi of Gari is still my favorite over all sushi restaurant, but I consider that a different type of sushi altogether due to the creativity aspect. But as far as pure unadulterated traditional fish and rice, in my opinion Hiura is right at the top of the class.

Saturday night Kat and Rick hosted a white party on their rooftop. Everyone had to wear white, a la P. Diddy’s birthday party; a nice touch since it was Memorial Day weekend, the annual kickoff of white being fashionably acceptable. It was an absolutely perfect night weather-wise, warm with no humidity and a constant cool breeze. We had a great time just kickin back, eating, drinking and playing poker in the dark. Some of the funny culinary accents included KFC and Fla.Vor.Ice. Ahhh, as a kid, I always loved the green and blue Fla.Vor.Ice… Jeannie brought a box of cookies from a vegetarian bakery which were pretty darn good for something with a soy-based frosting. I don’t know if they were worth $4 per cookie(!), but they were definitely good.

Last night was also UFC 71 with Rampage Jackson going up against Chuck Liddell. In my opinion, it also officially marked Mixed Martial Arts finally achieving mainstream status. ESPN launched an MMA section on their website, and they now officially include the UFC as part of their normal SportsCenter coverage. To all the naysayers from 5 years ago who said our sport could never reach mainstream appeal, they all can now officially suck it. The UFC is kicking boxing’s ass in PPV numbers and marketing appeal. On ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption last week, both Kornheiser and Wilbon acknowledged that the UFC is the current big thing, this after Kornheiser had once said he would not talk about MMA on the show again. Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter has been going strong, and an HBO deal is on the horizon. It’s been a long hard road for UFC President Dana White, but his work is really paying off. For those of us who have been with Sherdog and The Underground for what seems like forever, we have Dana to thank for taking our rogue little subculture and bringing it to legitimacy. Yeah, he may look and talk like a weasel, but even the haters have to admit that the sport of MMA has finally arrived and Dana deserves mad props for making it happen.