Yummy...
Jaime Ee | The Business Times | Sat Nov 10 2007
Tokyu Supermarket
So you swear by the sushi at Meidi-Ya supermarket in River Valley? You aint seen nothing yet.
While the likes of Tokyos Isetan and Takashimaya boast takeaway sushi in their newly refurbished food halls, Tokyu supermarket retains its original frenetic self complete with fish vendors trying to out-shout each other to attract customers to their displays of gleaming red slabs of tuna and other freshly cut seafood.
Enticing displays of sushi in various permutations call out to shoppers who fill their baskets with dinner for the day. The prices are amazing fat slices of fish on rice can be had for around 980 yen (about S$13), while roughly cut tuna sashimi went for about 900 yen.
Tokyu Supermarket
Shibuya Station
Sushi Daiwa
You may have long given up on the idea of ever getting into this tiny little restaurant that is as famous as the fish market itself. There isnt a single foodie website that doesnt recommend it, which means long lines for sushi breakfasts as early as 5 am.
If youre not able to wake up in time with the rest of Japans tuna, take a chance and go there at around 1 in the afternoon. The market itself would have closed by then but if youre lucky, it will be almost closing time at Daiwa and hardly anyone will be lining up to get in.
That means you might be able to squeeze in with the last diners of the day, at a counter where you sit shoulder-to-shoulder with both locals and non-Japanese in a claustrophobic ambience. But you hunker down and ignore your discomfort as you mutter setto (set) to the amiable chef who immediately starts plonking down fat hunks of toro (tuna belly) on your plate.
Refined elegance is hardly what you get in Daiwa. Its just chop shop service with roughly cut chunks of fish slapped down on rice with no finesse whatsoever.
But yes, the fish is fresh and in generous portions the toro was more of a slab than a slice, albeit so icy that its clean and milky texture was dulled in the mouth. They pay no attention to temperature or presentation, but compared to the other sushi joints in the area, you cant beat Daiwa in terms of value-for-money.
A couple of notches above Tokyu, Daiwa is tops in its category. But is it the best sushi youll find in Tokyo? Not by a long shot.
Sushi Daiwa
Tsukiji Fish Market
Midori Sushi
Listed in the Luxe travel guide, Midori is located in the trendy Ginza Corridor, joining a long row of restaurants just below the train tracks. Long queues can be expected, but they thin out closer to the end of lunch time and boasts some of the largest slices of fish or eel on smallish balls of rice one has ever seen.
Set meals can be had for as low as 2,190 yen a large platter of mixed sushi which includes tuna, sea eel (anago), sea urchin (uni), yellowtail (hamachi), salmon roe, shrimp and omelette (tamago), and a small chawanmushi and crab liver salad. If youre hungry, you can really fuel up on one of these sets.
Have one of these and you could probably set off on foot from Ginza to Roppongi Hills without the need to refuel. But if you want to expound on the finer qualities of uni sushi, this place would fail.
Midori Sushi
Ginza 7-108, Ginza Korida-dori 1F
Tel: 5568-1212
Seamon Sushi Restaurant
Now that you know what cheap and good sushi tastes like, its time to raise the stakes a little at this very appealing sushi joint that marries modern design aesthetics with Edo-mae (pre-Edo)style sashimi and sushi.
Step into a tiny lift which brings you to an equally tiny restaurant that looks more like a really cool bar where patrons sit either at a long sushi counter or mould themselves to fit into the tiny tables that seem to have been scooped out of the adjacent wall.
Lunch sets are affordably priced from 2,940 yen to 6,825 yen. Try the 4,725 yen Seamon set lunch for a delicate and delicious peek into what the restaurant offers. Quality-wise it is several notches above the likes of Daiwa and Midori and youre eating in stylish surroundings where as much emphasis is placed on the crockery used as the ingredients themselves.
The set starts off with a seaweed and vegetable salad and a homemade sesame tofu square topped with a tiny wafer of dried fish and wasabi. A super fresh oyster is served in its shell with a well-tempered soy vinaigrette, followed by the prettiest shrimp sashimi sliced thin and fanned out on a rock slab, served with julienned slices of kelp which you roll with the shrimp and squeeze a drop of yuzu juice on. The head of the shrimp is deep fried to a crunchy crisp that you eat whole.
Seamon Sushi Restaurant
Sakaguchi Bldg
6F, 5-5-13, Ginza, Chuo-ku
Tel: 03-5537-0010
www.seamon.jp
Sushi Nakata
If Kyubei is said to be among the top sushi restaurants in Tokyo, Nakata is said to be just one level below. But if you want to explore the various levels in sushi quality at the top price level in Tokyo, Nakata is a good example.
Authenticity is its selling factor thats assuming youre open to the idea that nobody here speaks a word of English, and its patronised completely by locals. It must be, given the looks of surprise that you get when you open your mouth and no Japanese comes out.
That doesnt stop the sushi chef from rattling off at you in Japanese earnestly, perhaps in the hope that if he speaks long enough, youll understand something. The sushi here is large, so large that the chef kindly cuts each piece into two for easier eating. There was blood red maguro, squid, clam, sardine, grilled anago, and some lovely broiled toro sushi. It wasnt a lot of sushi, and a bill of S$300 for two left a lump in our throats.
But the quality was definitely top notch, which you can tell from the sweetness and odour-free uni, which you only get at restaurants of this level. Lunch here was a far sight better than the average quality sushi at the Imperial Hotel branch, which serves to show that so long as one restaurant has branches, its always best to go to the original.
Sushi Nakata
Mikuni Ginza Building
5F, 6-7-19 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
Tel: 03.3571.0063
Branch: Imperial Hotel
Sushi Kyubei
Kyubei is known for inventing gunkan-maki the style of sushi where seaweed is wrapped around sushi rice and topped with roe or uni.
With several branches across the city and one just across the road from the original Kyubei has been expanding at an amazing rate, while enjoying enormous press coverage and an A-list clientele from around the world.
All this threatens to take away the charm of the restaurant, especially at lunch, when the well-priced sets (about 4,000 yen upwards) are served assembly line style by a chef who slices his fish in advance before fashioning them into sushi and distributes among the six people or so he is attending to. The quality meets standards but is hardly memorable. But go for dinner and its a different story altogether.
Super milky chutoro sashimi, a beautifully bouncy/crunchy slice of hirame, silky shiroko (whale sperm) so fresh it just needed a light dressing, crunchy deep-fried sea eel bone and mind-blowingly tender steamed abalone it all sent memories of Daiwa and Midori disappearing into oblivion.
Its here that you will truly understand the concept of fine sushi and why it is impossible to get
good and cheap sushi that is of this quality and of such high cooking standards. Its the quality of the rice, the temperature of the fish, the way they parboil shrimp to perfection and the expertise of the chefs that make it such a fine dining experience thats well worth the $300 price tag.
Not to mention that owner Mr Imada personally shows up towards the end of the meal to greet and chit chat with customers, passing out copies of an interview he did with the Wall Street Journal. Theres no denying that his PR machine is in overdrive as he builds what the WSJ calls a sushi empire, but with sushi this good, he can be forgiven.
Sushi Kyubei
8-7-6 Ginza, Chuo-ku
Tokyo
Tel: 03.3571.6523
Sushiko
If the hype around Kyubei isnt quite your cup of tea, you are guaranteed of an equally good, if not better, sushi meal at the less-publicised but equally venerable Sushiko, also in Ginza.
There are two floors of counter seating which fit 11 people each. Fortuitously, we ended up in the coveted second floor, where chef Hirata and his more than adequate English and sommelier skills ensured that we had a memorable meal.
Like most restaurants of this ilk, there is no menu to speak of, and they literally feed you until you tell them to stop, probably at the $350 level.
An interesting range of starters included a clean-tasting fresh crab salad, exquisite clam in sake, and an amazing melt in the mouth tuna sushi with absolutely no sign of veins or stringiness. This is achieved by a chef who painstakingly cleaves layer after layer from a slab of tuna, removing all the
sinews until he is left with pure, fatty ambrosia that he slices and mounds over perfectly cooked rice.
You just cant get enough of this silky smooth mouth feel, and with superb uni, broiled tuna and more, you truly feel that you have achieved the ultimate in sushi dining if you have to scrimp on other meals, do so, because a meal like this you just cannot miss.
Sushiko, 6-3-8 Ginza, Tokyo
Tel: 03/3571-1968
. Lodgings and airplane tickets aside, cause I've a friend's place to stay in at tokyo. Mainly just the spending on food and attractions i guess.
