Win/Fail Fridays: Yay for O Ya, Yay for Go Fish

Welcome to Win/Fail Fridays, where food editor Donna Garlough mouths off about her latest dining-out adventures.

This week’s WIN #1: Orderly ordering at O Ya

The menu at Leather District sushi mecca O Ya is extraordinary. It’s also extraordinarily long: Our party of two was advised to order about 15 plates, and that would be a mere sampling. There are also a tremendous number of ingredient repeats: Salmon is done with sesame ponzu, as a tartare with cucumber yogurt coulis, and with sesame oil drizzle; tuna comes as wild Cape Cod bluefin maguro, Peruvian style chutoro tataki, and bluefin tartare. Needless to say, keeping track of what you want to order is a pain. Thankfully, our server detected our episode of menu A.D.D., and promptly delivered a pen so we could mark up the paper menu. She then took the annotated menu instead of having us recite our selections. While that may not impress people as much as the usual fine-dining method of memorizing the order, I was glad for this system. Because, you know, if my diver scallops came out with olive oil bubbles instead of sake-sea urchin jus, I’d be pretty pissed.

This week’s WIN #2: Meals on Wheels at Go Fish!

The food truck’s clam chowder comes with frizzled onions on top. Its Friday special of corn-and-crab chowder was creamy and delicately sweet. And it seems to be following me around: It parks across the plaza from my office on weekdays and is stationed in the Charlestown Navy Yard — a few blocks from my house — on weekends. It may be stalking me, but at this rate, I’m going to be the one who’s obsessed.

Stay tuned for next week’s Win/Fail!