Tex Wasabi's Rock and Roll BBQ - Sushi - Sacramento, CA

Tex Wasabi's has never been featured on the Food Network's Diner's, Drive-Inns and Dives but, it is actually owned by none other than Guy Fiere himself.  Anyone slightly familiar with the program knows that Guy is a wild and creative guy with a love of really great food.  His restaurant definitely reflects that.

The concept behind Tex Wasabi's is to mix two completely different types of food into it's own class, an "infusion" of different influences to use the restaurant buzz-wordy name.  In this case it is sushi and BQQ.  It doesn't sound like it would work but, it really does.

When you first walk in past the bar area you notice a statue of a cowboy on a bucking fish, kind of like a bucking bronco.  So, you know right away that this is a whimsical place.  It is going to be fun and unpredictable.

As we walked in there was a couple who had ordered a drink from the bar.  The drinks that they serve were out of absurdly large goblets.  They looked like small fish tanks, in fact they very well could have been small gold fish bowls into which they stuck huge straws the size of the old pixie stix tubes.

It looks like they put a lot of imagination into the drink menu as well.  They were advertising a double apple mojito that sounded pretty good.

We got an order of the chicken wings to start off with.  They came with slices of fried jalapeno pepper on top.  The pepper had a nice even flavor and slightly crunchy tempura texture and it was not spicy-hot at all.  The wings were spicy-hot Buffalo wings.  They also had a selection of hot sauces that the waitress brought over.

They don't let you forget that this is Guy's place.  His picture is all over the place between the bbq sauce bottle lables, t-shirts, posters and the several large lcd screens showing DDD episodes in continuous loops.

The menu has two sushi sections: maki sushi and gringo sushi.  Off of the gringo menu, I had the Jackass Roll which was BBQ pork, avocado, french fries & garlic chili mayo sauce.  It had a real smokey BBQ flavor like you would expect of of BBQ but not sushi but it really did work well.

The baked beans side were some of the best beans that I have ever had.  They were black, white and red (I think) beans but the sauce was not too sweet and had a great slat-smokey flavor to it that is hard to describe.  I really enjoyed it.

The ribs and pulled pork were really good as well.  Coming from Texas, we get a lot of really good BBQ.  I would consider this to be Texas style BBQ and really good.  By the time I got through the BBQ sushi and all of the other experiences, the plain old BBQ seemed kind of boring because it was just BBQ.

I would rate Tex Wasabi's a 9.9 because of the imagination and awesome food.  Tex Wasabi's is definitely not a dive.  It is a nice restaurant, part of a corporation with a CEO and all of the other alphabet soup titles, multiple locations, etc. So, it lacks that kind of dive charm which is the only reason why it could not have been a 10.  Definitely worth checking out.

Tex Wasabi's
2243 Arden Way
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 927-8399
http://www.texwasabis.com/