Our relationship with Mizuna has been rocky as of late. Over the last year they served up a gnocchi best forgotten about, and service during a lunch was bad enough that it bordered on being funny. So we kinda gave up on Mizuna, at least for a while.
Recently, though, things have looked up again, enough so we feel Mizuna has redeemed itself back to being a part of the upper echelon of Spokane dining. Who knows if this impression will last, but we feel rather optimistic that it will.
For our last visit we started out with the fritto misto, here consisting of deep fried vegetables. The dish was surprisingly light, meaning not over- or undercooked, and the accompanying aioli made for an excellent dipping sauce.
Mizuna has always made a good soup -- that has been the case even during our rocky period -- and the kale with pancetta soup here had a nice, spring-y flavor to it. It wasn't a flavor bomb, and we were OK with that.
For our entree we tried the sirloin and prosciutto burger. Much talk has been made of what the best burger in Spokane is (many make a case for Churchill's and that's a very fair case to make), and we'd definitely throw this one into the running. Perfectly cooked at medium rare (and they didn't ask for doneness preference, which I, personally, think is the correct way of doing it) and also topped with aioli over the prosciutto and greens.
In a sense it was a simple burger in terms of assembly, yet each part combined into something with a lot of depth. It was more like eating a steak on a bun, a bun which incidentally was what burgers should be served on. The burger has failed if you can't eat the bun by itself, and here you could clearly eat it like you would a piece of bread.
Hopefully Mizuna's bumpy ride is over. The food was excellent, as was the service, and we're ready to start loving on Mizuna like we once did.