Sunday, October 24, 2010

I Ate Sashimi!

Last weekend's trip to Calgary was a very awesome experience, and I have a zillion stories to tell but one I thought might be interesting for my readership here was a sushi restaurant I visited with my one of my BFFs, J.

J loves sushi and she knows I love sushi, so she took me off to a place whose name I cannot remember, though it began with a K, on McLeod Trail. What's fascinating about it is that this was one of those sushi restaurants that has the little boats on a moving waterway carrying colour-coded plates of food around the bar, and you just pick off what you want as it comes around. I have heard of these places in Vancouver, but never been to one, so this was exciting for me.

Unfortunately the frenetic pace of the place, the yelling of sushi chefs, and the multiple birthdays that necessitated the staff doing a Happy Birthday routine several times during our time there, didn't make the place somewhere conducive to having a good chat. In fact, the high stimulation environment really bothered me to the point of almost not being able to function. But it was fun, and when we were done there, we repaired to a Tim Horton's so we could actually have a good chat.

The food was good. We started off with some tempura and J had some miso soup. We ordered several rolls as we watched plates go by us on the boats. Thankfully, we were provided with a picture menu so we had an idea of what was floating by us.

J ordered some salmon sashimi, I got some interesting octopus rolls and some calamari. The calamari was disappointing and overly greasy, as was, I have to say, the tempura. The octopus was good. We had a variety of other rolls, too, that were very good.

You'd think the plates were just whizzing by when you look at this photo. They were not. I just have a shitty camera.

The calamari. The sauce it came with was spicy, so I skipped it.

This is the octopus roll.

This is the salmon sashimi, and I really did enjoy it. It was my first ever foray into sashimi! It was served on a bed of shredded daikon radish.

And this was my most daring choice of the night, a raw scallop roll with some...stuff on it. Not sure what the stuff was, but it was delicious!

This was a very cool experience, and I'd definitely like to go to one of these places again, especially as there were some very interesting menu items that I'd never seen before. I will say, however, something did upset my stomach that night; I'm not sure what it was, but I was quite uncomfortable for a while. But it was not enough to put me off experimenting with sushi and sashimi again.

6 comments:

Barbara Bruederlin said...

I don't think that I have ever had sashimi either, as I generally like the rice and nori part of the sushi, but that salmon does look lovely!

Anonymous said...

I have never been to a "floating boat" sushi restaurant. Fun! Great photo, I love sushi.

Coleens Recipes said...

You are very brave, I'm impressed. I grew up around fresh caught wild salmon my whole life, and you couldn't PAY me to eat it raw...haha (I won't tell you why, just in case you want to eat it again), hahahaa.

Van said...

Oh, I love sashimi! If I could, I would eat it every day... tho that gets expensive, and then there is the whole "don't eat so much fish cause of mercury" thing...

*sigh*

Wandering Coyote said...

@ Barb: the salmon sashimi was really delicious. I wouldn't eat it all the time, but it's worth it to try it just once.

@ HRF: it was a really fun experience, just a tad bit chaotic.

@ Colleen: no, I really don't want to know why! LOL! I can only imagine, though, that you've seen some pretty rough things!

@ Van: this wasn't one of the cheapest things on the menu, that's for sure. It was my friend's choice, though, and I just had a piece of hers. It would get really expensive, and yeah, I would worry about mercury, too. The raw scallop was interesting; I didn't think I'd like the texture, but it was really delicious. Should I try steak tartare next???

phlegmfatale said...

Looks delish! As for what's on your scallop, it looks like a Japanese version of a mayo (delish!), masago(flying fish roe) which are so grand for the teeny firecracker strand of dozens of little exploding orbs between the teeth, scallions, and the sauce is one I've never been able to find out the name, but my best description would be a slightly less salty soy sauce, maybe with a little rice wine for breadth of flavor. Love that stuff - is very elegant and a nice foil for very oily fishes like mackerel. Now my my tastebuds are whimpering, longing for sushi. Love the little boats restaurants, be they on water or a conveyor belt. There's an hilarious scene in Johnny ENglsih where he gets his tie caught in a conveyor belt at a hip London sushi place.

Good stuff! Love yer blog! I made Poppyseed coffee cake last night. I feel like we're twins or somesuch.

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