USS Nemo: a restaurant review

Mr. Tess wanted to take me to a nice restaurant when I arrived in Naples, Florida. The USS Nemo (3745 Tamiami Trail North, Naples, Phone: 239-261-6366) was recommended by a woman at the front desk at our hotel: an excellent choice—wonderful food, an unusual mix of fresh Florida seafood, Japanese, and Indian cuisine, and interesting submarine/undersea decor.

USS Nemo Restaurant Naples, Florida

Swan River Seafood, next door.

Swan River Seafood, next door.

This post is also only my second restaurant review (first restaurant review), and I see a “learning curve” ahead of me if I want to become a restaurant reviewer.
#1: adjust camera to low-light conditions,
#2: don’t be embarrassed to take pictures,(and make sure you are not taking pictures of the restaurant next-door if you are sitting outside in a strip mall location) Swan River looked good too!,
#3: take notes (take pictures of the menu!!!) and post ASAP,
#4: talk to your waiter who should be able to tell you details or even gossip,
#5…hmm…lots to learn.amuse-bouche_2110

After we ordered, the waiter brought us some very nice bread and a plate with hummus, zucchini, pickled ginger, Japanese seaweed salad—smooth creamy hummus, a tart lemony dressing on the zucchini, and chewy seaweed and agar-agar greens.

mussels_2114We ordered mussels as an appetizer and they were served with crisp toasted, garlicy bread and a very nice spicy sauce. Never-mind that Mr. Tess has become an expert at cooking mussels to tender perfection, and these were ever so slightly over cooked, this dish was calling out to become a simple pasta/mussels dinner on their own.
Perhaps he’ll be able to make something like it at home??

I ordered Nemo’ signature dish: Miso Broiled Sea Bass with citrus-ginger butter sauce (it seemed to have 2 sauces: one buttery and one citrus-miso), jasmine rice, asparagus and carrot tempura. The jasmine rice was fantasitic with tiny bits of nori and the most wonderful bonito flakes: at first I thought it had bacon! It was that smokey and rich! All fabulous.

USS Nemo Miso Sea Bas

Mr. Tess had snapper with spinach, juienned beets flavored with ginger, and a pickled green onion that looked beautiful. Perhaps it was a tsuekemono flavored with the ginger sauce and colored with the beet juice. It was odd that my meal came with a very pretty disk of rice under the exquisite fish and the bowl of jasmine rice, while Mr. Tess’s dinner had none!

USS Nemo Restaurant Naples, Florida

It was all beautiful, and inspiring for me to try presenting my own cooking so nicely.

uss-nemo_2149And there is Mr. Tess on the far left, waiting patiently while I pretend I’m a restaurant reviewer taking pictures of the place we enjoyed so much.

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2 thoughts on “USS Nemo: a restaurant review

  1. It is a nice restaurant .
    Recently I don’t go to restarants with my husband..
    By the way,
    when we went to a restaurant in the USA, we had to count tips. It was difficult to do that. And we felt nervous.

  2. Hi Lucy,
    The food at that restaurant was excellent! But it was much more expensive than I’ve ever spent on a meal.
    Tipping is difficult, but in the USA, waitresses and waiters don’t get paid very much: not even minimum wage!!! It makes it difficult to figure out what your meal costs! But if you don’t tip the servers, they are making very little money. I agree that is is not a good system.

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