22 August 22 - 28, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ▼ EAT THIS BASS PRO UCHIKO’S GRILLED SEA BASS IS THE BEST MEAL FOR TWO IN NORTH TEXAS. BY LAUREN DREWES DANIELS U chiko recently opened in Plano, one of the new ventures from Hai Hospi- tality, led by James Beard Award- winning chef Tyson Cole. Cole started in the service industry as a dishwasher and never had sushi until he worked at a restaurant. He became fasci- nated with the cuisine and trained for 10 years under sushi masters in Austin, New York and Tokyo. In 2003, Cole opened Uchi in a con- verted house in South Austin. In 2005, Food and Wine named him one of the nation’s 10 best new chefs. In 2009, Bon Appetit crowned Uchi one of the top 10 sushi spots in the U.S. In 2011, Cole won a prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef South- west. Hai now has restaurants in seven cit- ies across the country. The Hai Hospitality dossier includes Uchi (Japanese cuisine and sushi), Uchiba (“ba” meaning bar, for a more casual yet inti- mate experience) and Loro (a parlay of Cen- tral Texas barbecue and Japanese fare). There’s an Uchi in Uptown and Uchiba is just upstairs from it. Loro opened in East Dallas in 2021 and was an instant entry on our restaurant rotation. Uchiko opened in 2010 in Austin, with a second spot in Houston and, finally, in Plano this year. It is the fire and smoke iteration of the original concept and an anchor tenant in the Legacy West complex of shops and res- taurants, which was bustling on sizzling hot Wednesday evening recently. Uchiko is uncluttered and mellow. With its dark wood, the modern space is like a pair of tailored jeans that can be dressed up or down: flip-flops or loafers; heels or Stan Smiths. The menu has close to 100 offerings, from daily specials to oysters, sashimi, su- shi, caviar and cold tastings. Almost every table in the house orders the grilled eda- mame, but just skip that. (It’s literally at ev- ery table.) As for service, our server knew every in- gredient of every dish top to bottom. Used plates were whisked away with a touch of tyranny. Service is lean, quiet and squeaky clean. Like brand new Stan Smiths. We started with a pair of East Coast oys- ters dressed in a shiso mignonette and shiro (hear us out) creme fraiche. Impossible, you say? Brilliant, as it turns out. A plate of hama chili comes with a light ponzu dressing and Thai chili over slivers of orange, all blessed with golden tobiko. Every bite a delight. Please, skip the eda- mame. The menu is large, so the best strategy is to start with the From the Hearth section, the hot soul of Uchiko that sets it apart. Con- sider that home base, then branch out. We dove to the bottom of the list past the hearth-roasted lobster, New York Strip (wa- gyu, of course) and hama kama to the post oak grilled sea bass ($65) with a brown but- ter dashi and fennel. The chef tells us the sea bass is dried out overnight prior to grilling, rendering a crispier skin. The whole fish gets a spray of sake as it’s cooking, imparting more fla- vor and caramelizing as it blisters over the embers. Fire-kissed and served with a heap of fresh herbs, this is one of the most enjoyable dishes we’ve shared in a long time. A feast. The server told us there’s a limited number each day, so arrive early to make sure you snag one (better yet make that reservation early, the house was packed on said hot Wednesday). Too bad they don’t take reservations on the sea bass. Use either chopsticks or a spoon (or your hands) to flake apart pieces of the fish soak- ing in the brown butter dashi (sigh), grab- bing herbs along the way. This meal is resplendent and, considering there’s more than enough for two, at $65 it’s a humdinger of a deal for an elevated night out. We ordered sides of Japanese sweet po- tatoes ($15) made with more brown butter and vinaigrette and that light creme fraiche. A bowl of furikake rice also helped soak up more of the dashi lying un- der the fish (sigh). With a couple of cock- tails or a Sapporo (but no edamame), this is a $100 meal we’d gladly soak up any day, inflation, interest rates or soft landing be damned. Uchiko, 7801 Windrose Ave., Plano. Sun- day – Thursday 4–10 p.m.; Friday – Saturday, 4–11 p.m. ▼ DELIVERY IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE, IT’S LUNCH! DRONE-POWERED FOOD DELIVERY SOARS IN NORTH TEXAS, LOOKS TO EXPAND. BY LAUREN DREWES DANIELS F or people who live near one of Fly- trex’s drone launch sites in North Texas — Little Elm and Granbury — food delivery has taken to the skies. Here’s how it works: First you download the Flytrex app and drop in an address to see if delivery is available to your home. If it is, there are about three dozen restaurants to order food from, much like any car-based delivery app, including White Rhino Cof- fee, Whataburger, Jack in the Box, The Brass Tap and many local restaurants. Place an order. A Flytrex employee picks it up at the restaurant, brings it to the drone launch site (a grassy yard), pops it into the drone and a few minutes later, it’s dropped off in your yard We had so many questions. Like, what about ice cream? Won’t it melt? The company says no because delivery in a drone is much faster than in a car. Ohhhh. No stoplights. So we spoke with Flytrex’s CEO and co- founder, Yariv Bash, about the evolution of this project. Bash is no stranger to flight: he was co-founder of Space IL, a nonprofit that landed a robotic craft on the moon. While he’s still involved in that project, he’s also intent on making drone deliveries a part of everyday life here on Earth. Mostly we wanted to know how soon drone-based food delivery will be wide- spread in North Texas. To date, Flytrex has made more than 100,000 deliveries via drone from its two sites in North Texas and one in North Caro- lina. The Little Elm station has about 1,500 active users. The delivery range for a drone is 2.5 miles from the site. Once in the sky, it takes about three minutes for delivery. Here’s our Q&A with Bash: Q: How much weight can each drone carry? A: Currently, it’s six and a half pounds. No matter what you order, we’re going to get you your order, either with two drones or even a human being if it’s too heavy. But we are here to deliver your dinner or lunch. So we’ll make sure that it happens. Q: Once at a destination, does the drone land on the ground? A: We use a tether [to drop bags down]. We need an empty space of roughly 10 by 10 feet, but the U.S. suburbs are amazing for that. Q: Is theft a problem? B: Not at all. A lot less than with the regular deliveries. If you’re ordering something on Amazon or with FedEx, they leave it on your front door, then it’s a problem. But when you are ordering a pizza or a burrito, that’s not a problem. And when we deliver to your backyard, that’s also much less a problem. Q: No one ever tries to steal the drones by grabbing the tether? A: You can pull the tether and we just release it and fly out. We’ve done 100,000 deliveries by now. We are real experts on anything that could happen. There’s not a lot that could happen to the drone. It’s 85 feet up in the air. Q: Are there airspace restrictions? What are the laws regarding flying a drone in a city? A: We are heavily regulated by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], and the location of each station. And it [a Flytrex drone] might look like a drone you can buy online, but it’s actually a drone that went through a five-year certification process with the FAA. That’s why we are allowed to fly above people’s houses and do these kind of deliveries. It [the drone certifica- tion] is not something that you can get quickly. We’ve done 100,000 commercial flights to people’s backyards to paying cus- tomers. We’ve done almost an order of magnitude more flights than that during testing. Q: How realistic is widespread drone delivery? A: The future is already here. It’s just not evenly spread. In places like Granbury and Little Elm, it’s already a daily reality. The first time they order with a drone, every- body’s outside taking a selfie. By the third or fourth time, it just becomes the new normal and they just keep using it. It’s faster, it’s more affordable. And the repeatability, you get your food hotter and faster time and time again. So people just enjoy using the service time after time. Q: What’s the time frame for expansion? Currently, we’re waiting for an additional FAA approval. Once we have that, we’ll be able to scale our service on a much bigger scale. So I expect that during next year we’re going to see more flight decks delivering stations across Texas and hopefully across the U.S. Q: A bigger scale for Flytrex specifically? A: For the entire industry. There are a few other companies: Google by Alphabet and Amazon, but they’re not ones to deliver bur- ritos. They’re going to do Amazon packages and warehouses. They’re a different market, and all of us are getting those needed ap- provals. Simultaneously, once the market opens up, you’re going to see a lot more de- livery happening. Q: Is there a specific regulation or law that ev- eryone is trying to get pushed through? A: Basically we are, all the companies are now allowed to fly multiple drones using a single operator. We can fly beyond the vi- sual outside of that operator. So it’s com- mercially viable as a service. That’s the important part. However, currently we need people to watch the skies for incom- ing airplanes, and the bigger the area, the more people you need to look for incoming airplanes. Q: So you basically need air traffic control for drones? A: Yes, it’s air traffic control, and it’s the abil- ity to avoid other aircraft. A system needs to be in place. Lauren Drewes Daniels The post oak sea bass at Uchiko. City of Ate from p21
