I never tried Blue Fish in Santa Ana, but I knew of its existence. Recently, I noticed it ceased to exist. The storefront it formerly occupied has been stripped bare. Inside, there was nothing left but some semblance of what used to be a sushi bar.
No doubt the competition was tough against Kaisen, which still draws daily crowds just a block down. Or even San Kai across the street. To be quite honest, about the only thought I gave to Blue Fish was that its name sounded a lot like Bluefin — one of the most popular sushi joints in O.C. Blue Fish, it seems, was on the wrong end of that spectrum.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.