Hama Matsu- Disappointment

First off, I'm a new poster here, and so I'd like to say hello and thanks for designing such a cool forum.
Anyways, I was in Andersonville meeting a friend for a drink, and we decided to grab a quick bite in the area. As we exited the Hopleaf, Hama Matsu caught my eye, and I had heard decent things about it so we decided to check it out. There were two things that immediately struck us as positive: their BYO policy, and a nice, comfortable dinning room. So we dropped in to the corner store to grab some sake and beer, and hungrily sat down at the sushi bar. We were quickly given some very good miso soup, which briefly whetted our appetites.
Mike, the chef behind the bar, was very engaging and friendly, and we decided to leave our meal in his hands. We just told him to give us a selection of rolls and pieces, and to use what he thought was the freshest fish that day.
What we ended up getting was decent, but ultimately disappointing. He started us out with two monster rolls in succession. I'm generally not the biggest fan of roles with a bunch of different stuff thrown together. I find that the flavors often end up competing, or just melding together into one big mess. And, as was certainly the case with these rolls, they're often too huge to comfortably fit a single piece in your mouth and chew without your cheeks bulging to the breaking point. These roles were definitely of the huge and messy sort.
The first role was spicy, and featured tuna and some kind of cooked fish mixture with mayo in the center. The role was decent, but no great shakes. I think the main problem was that no particular flavor emerged except for the spiciness.
The second role was a bit better on the flavor side, but was so big in diameter that it was nearly impossible to fit a single piece in my mouth (and my mouth is not petite). This role featured an eel mixture in the center, with tuna and salmon draped on the outside. It also had toasted rice mixed in with the traditional sushi rice, and a miso based sauce over the top. I would have enjoyed it more if I didn't have to concentrate so hard on keeping the damn thing in my mouth while I chewed. The miso sauce was tasty, and worked well with the toasted rice, but kind of overwhelming because it was used in excess.
After these we kindly requested not to get any more rolls, and just a selection of fish. We were soon dealt up a plate of nice size pieces of basically mediocre fish. We had salmon, tuna, yellow tail, and mackerel. Overall the salmon was the best, with some nice fattiness, but none of the fish had great texture or flavor. We were pretty full at this point, so I requested a scallop hand roll to finish off the meal. It was not bad, but somewhat sloppily rolled, and the scallops were a little on the fishy side.
Overall, while I'm glad to see the place is doing well (it got very busy while we were there) I probably won't be going back anytime for the fish. It wasn't terribly expensive, (about 25 a person with tip, and a bit extra to get beer before hand), but I think you can do much better for the money at other places around town. I wouldn't put the quality of fish above Tokyo Marina, and I would say it's probably a bit less expensive.
Hama Matsu does feature Korean dishes as well, but we didn't try any of these when we were there.

Bodzi,

Thanks for the review of your experience at Hama Matsu. While for your sake, I wish it had been better, for my sake, I'm glad to have one fewer "must try" restaurant on my list.

In today's world, eating mediocre fish just doesn't make sense.

keep eating,
J. Ro