The identity of the eatery that was formerly the long-lived Midwest Grill in Inman Square seems to have settled – for now. As of late last year, the locale is One Bite, a pleasantly kitschy nouvelle sushi spot with Chinese influences. This follows Midwest shuttering during Covid, emerging from the shutdown as a Korean barbecue joint, reverting a short time afterward to Brazilian cuisine as JP’s Restaurant, then flipping back briefly to the Midwest moniker – or something like that.
Midwest Grill, in the area at two locations for nearly 30 years, was famous for its all-you-could eat meat skewers. Friendly servers would being by endless offerings of lean barbecued beef, grilled chicken hearts, smoked sausages and so on. Now, it’s sushi galore, sake and milk tea pudding. One Bite’s got a festive Hello Kitty vibe to it, adorned with fluorescent neon and beaming red panda countenances all around the main dining room, with a back bar that screams izakaya in style with an array of flatscreens playing poppy rap songs from around the globe – the common thread seeming to be a bottle of Cristal and a woman in high heels and a bikini to serve it.
Your full nigiri and maki slate is all there, including a special slate with local flair: There’s a Boston Celtics maki (spicy salmon, avocado and shrimp) and Red Sox maki (tempura shrimp, avocado and pepper tuna). Beyond that you can get a sushi taco, sushi doughnut, temari (rice balls wrapped in thin strips of fish) or One Bite Special Mini Bowl. For all practical purposes, the taco is similar to maki (lazily wrapped), the doughnut and temari are like nigiri on steroids, and the bite bowls are mini donburis.
Never having done the doughnut before and with scant temari experience, these are what I ordered: an eel and avocado doughnut and a hamachi (yellowfin tuna) temari. Both were bigger than I thought and came adorned with a tempura crunch and an aioli drizzle. The fish was fresh and served at the right temp (cooler than room temperature, but not cold; the eel was cooked), but I could have skipped the aioli (I tend to like my sushi dairy free unless it’s a raw quail egg accent) and I did not make my way through the ample amount of moist, sticky rice.
On the Chinese side of the menu I had shrimp and pineapple fried rice, which came in a festive carved-out pineapple boat. It too was a hefty portion, a tad dry and a little light on the shrimp and mango, but a pleasing fill-up. The Chinese slate also offers an array of stone hot pots (lamb belly, chicken and mushrooms, and fish and bean sauce among them) and skewers reminiscent of yakitori. If you’re missing Midwest’s chicken hearts, know you can get chicken gizzards – it should do. Also intriguing on the appetizer menu is the beef wrapped in a scallion pancake.
One Bite has a full bar and a slate of rich milk tea pudding, which is dessert through a straw, and other traditional street beverage offerings. In daytime, it offers pretty much what amounts to a lunchbox with fried rice, stir-fried beans, Taiwanese popcorn shrimp and salt-and-pepper shrimp among the choices.
Like Midwest, One Bite is a dining experience – a place you can pop in for a nosh on the go, but more so a destination to bring the posse to celebrate with sushi and shareables.
One Bite, 1124 Cambridge St., Inman Square, Cambridge
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
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