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  Sushi Ginger After attending the Green Valley symposium a few months ago, I decided to

visit sushi restaurants in Petaluma. Clean, crisp, cold chardonnay is a perfect match for

sushi, so I set out just as the “Salute to American Graffiti” celebration was getting

under way.My first stop was Hiro’s Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar, located at 107

Petaluma Blvd. North. Hiro’s was booming. It was a very busy weekend and bustling with hot

rods and people everywhere. Roars of engines whined into the warm summer air. My cold glass

of 2006 Dutton Goldfield chardonnay was lightly oaked and locked to my hand like a hungry

Jamaican Bobsled Team racing down the ice.My co-pilot and old friend, Augie, was on his

first assignment with me. We were hungry and I had a good feeling Hiro was going to come at

us with something big in this first drag race of fine wine vs. fine sushi. Hiro greeted us

warmly, as always.With the wine chilling, the first wave of nigiri came out. It was a

decadent array of squid (ika), salmon (sake) and fatty tuna (toro). The catch: they were all

seared — but only slightly. We had already sampled the chardonnay and determined that there

was some oak to this treasure — but not too much — and he proceeded to have the chef

create this special dish.What was seared on the fish fenced itself brilliantly with the

toastiness in the wine. With aromas of pear and green melon circling brilliantly in my

olfactory, the love of each piece melted in my mouth, ultimately to drown down in wine like

a cold stone thrown into the bright summer air that sank into the depths of a warm pond.Now

I was getting green apple flavors — this wine was changing. It was complex and the second

dish arrived: It was a top-notch roll of complexity fortified with salmon and adorned with

salmon roe. Hiro then came out with yet another dish — a massive construction of California

roll with inches of toasted crab. Below the dish was a beautiful fire-red puree of Thai

pepper to render this the leader of all Dynamite Rolls. It seemed to pair perfectly with all

the high-octane fueling outside on the streets. Ba-boom! It was hot, but very delicious.Next

stop was Kabuki restaurant and sushi bar at 17 Petaluma Blvd. North. Seated right in front

of my chef, Akio, the room echoed with soft voices off the red brick wall. I ordered some

basic nigiri sushi. Tako (octopus) is a favorite of mine since my father and I spear fished

in the oceans off Japan the summer of my junior year at Petaluma High School. My choice of

wine was another Green Valley gem, the Marimar Estate Don Miguel Vineyard 2006 chardonnay.

It has notes of lemon zest and warmed, yellow, orchard apple. The tako was fresh and stirred

with the chardonnay into a beautiful culinary whirlwind. Next on the sushi strip was the

soft-shell crab. The thick, molasses-like sauce was wrong for the light and flavorful crab

and didn’t pair with chardonnay well, but the crab alone was just fine with the wine.The

next dish was in-season blue fin tuna. Smeared with wasabi and tackled by a mound of ginger,

this tasty helping of beautiful, fresh fish went down smoothly. My next piece, unagi, was

done correctly. The unagi (eel) was smothered in a thick teriyaki glaze, wrapped in seaweed

and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Cold wine with lemon notes chased it down.My last piece,

fatty tuna (toro) was followed by a big mouthful of this Green Valley beauty and the wasabi

continued to burn clean.For my last stop, I ventured across town to a real hot spot on the

sushi scene. Owned and run by Chef Steven Tam, Gohan is a very comfortable and upscale sushi

restaurant and bar located across from Orchard Supply Hardware in the new center off North

McDowell Boulevard.Right away, a huge plate of rolls passed me by to another table. It

looked like a California roll sliced and laid flat but with more. On top was at least an

inch of crab meat adorned with black and blue roe (fish eggs). Steve calls this one the

Carburetor.For Gohan, I chose the Ironhorse 2006 chardonnay. Cold and crisp and with no oak,

it still somehow poured into my mouth as a slightly creamy chardonnay. The minerality was

soft, the lemon and pit fruit, opulent but, most importantly, it was gentle and caressing.My

first dish was a specialty: fresh, thin-sliced halibut in carpaccio style, laid out like a

confident, winning hand of poker, its owner giving mixed signals not to give away the

success that lay below. On the bottom were paper-thin cucumber slices and, for a topper,

paper-thin jalapeno slices. This was so tasty with this chardonnay.Next, I was dribbling

fresh cut lemon over a nice plate of a half-dozen myagi oysters that lay in the shell with

some Lake Sonoma Sauvignon blanc and a yuzu sauce adorned with green and blue caviar and

slices of green onion. I grabbed the first mollusk and pulled the meat from the shell into

my mouth. Flavors raced wildly from the acid in the sauce, the salt of the caviar, a dabble

of green onion, the brininess of the oyster, and then the soft, meaty flesh.At the end, the

oyster was creamy, very fresh and bright. Oh yes, the wine — I grabbed the Ironhorse.

Immediately, the creaminess of the oyster met the lemony-orchard fruit and the perfect

levels of acidity created a splendor both of palate and mind.Next came a big, beautiful

presentation of Japanese scampi. It lay in a pool of mild-to-rich crème sauce. Cooked into

it was wakame seaweed. Slices of lemon posed atop this articulated contemporary piece and

big shrimp guarded its base.My first bite was amazing. The scampi was so fresh and the cream

sauce just lifted into my mouth and carried the scampi down and into my belly. The

minerality of the wine and the cold climate apple flavors in it resonated with the buttery

cream sauce, cutting through, covering, unfolding and releasing it into my senses.Steve

insisted on one more piece for a finale: a pancake of shizo leaf (Japanese green tea) topped

with halibut, a cream sauce and tobiko (caviar). Again, a hit, a winner, a knockout — a

finalist in any drag race.Overall, sushi is very good in this town. Having lived in Japan, I

can be a harsh critic; I expect the best. The wines I paired with it were phenomenal. To top

it off, a wonderful weekend of high-performance and antique cars from all over the country.

Petaluma defines what Arthur Fonzarelli once coined as “cool.”(Jason Jenkins is the owner

of Vine and Barrel, a wine shop at 143 Kentucky St. He offers Wednesday night wine education

classes from 6 to 8 p.m. and Saturday tastings from 4 to 7 p.m. He can be contacted at 765-

1112. The Web site is www.vineandbar rel.com)