We’re ruined.
Sushi will never be the same.
Cue melodramatic music now.
We’re exaggerating, but the sushi in Japan pretty much shattered every expectation we had. It is (predictably) the most tender and flavorful we’ve tasted and consuming it is a downright glee inducing experience.
The sushi sold at the supermarket is better than most fancy pants places stateside, but we decided to up the ante and visited Tsukiji Tamasushi at Takashimaya Times Square. They source all their seafood from the world renowned Tsukiji Fish Market, and specialize in made to order, all you can eat sushi. A fishlover’s paradise!!!
Here were the “rules”:
- a limit of 20 pieces of nigiri and 10 orders of hand rolls or temaki per order
- unlimited orders
- no time limit
- no take-out (or as the menu states, “Please all eat the sushi which I ordered”)
There was one catch though. We had to mark our orders on a sheet that had purely kanji. Sure there was an English menu for foreigners, but it was not formatted the same as the order sheet, so we had to master a match game to figure out what to order and how to order it – a small inconvenience for countless pieces of sushi.
We tried almost everything until our fish-filled bellies implored us to stop – tuna, fatty tuna, boiled shrimp, mantis shrimp, sweet shrimp (who knew there were so many?!), pounded whale, sea urchin, hamachi/amberjack, salmon, mackerel, scallop, conger eel, grilled duck (mmmm..) and that only skims the scale-y surface! Just look at the menu!
There will always be a fondness in our hearts for Westernized sushi – the dragon, valentine, and rainbow rolls that we’re so used to, yet the experience of eating sushi in Japan touched at the beauty of this delicacy. The fish, unadulterated with mayo, sauces, or those addicting crunchy flakes, is so pure – so delicious – and needed nothing else to make it so memorable in our minds and palates.
