Day 40 (Mar 8) Part 1 - The Best Sushi Experience Ever!!!

Location: Chuo-Ku, Tokyo, Japan
Weather: 11 degrees + cloudy
Author: Amy (cause this update is about FOOD!!!)

For once, I am writing the post on the correct day! I have skipped many many days as you can tell cause I've jumped straight into March. But I was so excited about this afternoon's visit to a really amazing sushi restaurant, thanks to Jeannie, so I had to share this experience with everyone while it is still fresh in my mind.

Us outside Sushizanmai (Actually taken after eating but never mind...)

This restaurant is located close to Tsukiji market and according to Jeannie, the queue for this restaurant on Saturdays can get pretty long... Even when we were eating, we could see a long line waiting to get in. It's called Sushizanmai and is part of a chain of restaurants but Jeannie reckons this is the freshest. I cannot thank Jeannie enough for bringing us to this restaurant! And you will see why...

Hmmm... what shall we have?

An experienced sushi eater, Jean recommended some sushi for us and did all the ordering. We just laid back and tucked in happily. ^_^

The menu. Pictures don't do them justice.

She got us started on the milder sushis and we worked our way up to the tastier ones. Clever, isn't it? This way, you can appreciate the taste of the sushi or else if you eat a really strong sushi like eel, then ate a mild one like roe, you would think the roe is less tasty.

Our chef of the day behind the counter. Each of us had a wooden sushi table in front of us for our freshly made sushi.

While we were waiting for our sushi, I noticed the fish tank behind the counter and I asked Jean if they catch the fish, slice it up and serve it there and then. And she said that during lunch, they usually serve a 'special' and sometimes it could be the freshly caught fish. More on the 'special' later!

Fish tank behind the counter for fresh sashimi!

The first sushi we were served was Sea Urchin Roe (Uni). It was a very good beginning because Chris and I had never tried it before and it was very interesting! The texture of sea urchin roe is very soft, almost like it could melt in your mouth. And it had a subtle flavour. It was very tasty. Apparently, if the roe is not fresh, it would taste fishy. I can tell you this was very good!

Sea Urchin Roe (Uni)

The Japanese way of eating sushi is to put the soy sauce on the roe/fish/prawn instead of dipping the rice bit in soy sauce as we usually do.

Squeezing a few drops of soy sauce directly on the roe.

Next up was Sweet Shrimp (Amai Ebi?). I was expecting this sweet tasting prawn (as in natural sweetness). Instead I got a burst of wasabi up my nose... Yup! I can't handle wasabi... so I couldn't really taste the sweet raw prawn... just the wasabi...

Sweet shrimp (Amai Ebi)
You can see the wasabi leaking out of the side already!!!

For these types of sushi, again the correct way of dipping it is to dip the prawn bit into soy sauce, not the rice. So Jean showed us how to tip it to the side (if using chopsticks), then dip it into soy sauce and chomp!

Turning the sushi on its side to make dipping easier.

Don't drop it.... doooooon't droooopppp.....

Then next came medium fatty tuna (Chutoru) and scallop (Hotate) sushi. At this point, I had already requested the chef to put less wasabi in my sushi. Very un-Japanese of me... but I prefer to taste my sushi, not the wasabi.

Scallop (Hotate) and Medium Fatty Tuna (Chu-toro)

Then we ordered the salmon sushi. I don't normally like salmon but this salmon was superb! Instead of just raw salmon, the salmon was out on a grill, then cooked with intense fire on the top for a few seconds (I'm sure there's a technical term for this). This resulted in a still soft, raw salmon on the underside but just cooked bit on the topside. It was THE BEST salmon sushi I have tasted!

Scorching the top side of the salmon.

Mine is the one on the far left cause I wanted mayonnaise on mine. I cried out to the chef to wait until I could whip out my camera before he cooked the salmon. I think they laughed at my enthusiasm...

And voila! My salmon sushi with mayonnaise.

Then we ordered the seawater eel (anago). There are 2 types of eel: freshwater (unagi) and seawater (anago). Again, this was cooked over the grill but no hot blowtorch this time. It was just normally cooked but it was cooked to perfection!

Cooking the eel. This was called 'Top quality sea-eel' on the menu.

The yummiest eel (Anago) sushi! The flesh was very tender and tasty.

And the cucumber slices on top complemented the unagi very well as one is tasty while the other is clean and fresh.

Ah! And we were in time for the SPECIAL! During lunch hours, they usually have a special which they would announce to everyone by ringing a bell and bellowing the special of the day to everyone.

Ringing the bell to announce the special which is....

...egg and seaweed roll!

I was actually hoping for the fishie in the tank... but no matter, the egg roll was nice too. It was not overly sweet and was quite refreshing because it was a change from the other sushis we had before.

Egg and seaweed roll

At this point, we were starting to feel a bit full but still wanted to have more amazing sushi. So I got a type of fish called Shima-aji and also herring roe sushi. The shima-aji wasn't as tasty as the other sushi we had previously but this could be because it was a mild sushi and my palette was already spoiled by all the other tasty sushi so this one seemed less tasty by comparison. Same for the herring roe. It was crunchy but not much taste other than that.

Shima-aji

Herring roe

Chrissie and Jeannie opted for squilla, which is like a prawn, and also broiled fatty tuna

Squilla

Broiled fatty tuna (Aburi-toro)

And that was the last we had... Actually, I wanted to end my sushi experience with something really tasty so I ordered another eel sushi (a smaller one) but I got too excited and ate it the moment it came so didn't manage to take a picture.

I think, the winners today were sea urchin roe (as a starter), salmon and eel (for me anyway). Chrissie liked chutoro (medium fatty tuna), uni (sea urchin roe), anago (sea-eel) and hotate (scallops).

We are so going back there again! Highly recommended for all!