Sushi! Again!

Last time, I posted about Samurai Sushi but I didn't bring my camera, so I had no pictures. Here is a picture of the salad without the cherry tomato. It has a ginger dressing, which I suppose is what makes it Japanese, because I don't see yellow-green lettuce as something Japanese.

This time, I took a bunch of pictures but the lighting was terrible and everyone wanted to eat. This resulted in blurry pictures. However, I did have a sushi-related epiphany.

So, 6 small pieces of avocado sushi costs $3.95.

The sushi/sashimi boat costs approximately $52.

As a vegetarian, if I spent $52 on avocado sushi at Samurai Sushi, I could savour about 78 pieces of sushi.

Now, that is a LOT of sushi. I love avocado sushi. The avocado is amazingly creamy, and surprisingly goes well with soy sauce. A LOT of soy sauce, actually, because I wanted to savour the moment, indulge, and obtain 420% of my sodium RDA for the day. The avocado was a bit over-ripe but it was still great! I should make avocado sushi at home, actually.

This is the sushi boat. It is not boat shaped because they ran out of boats and apparently we would've had to wait a long time to get a wooden boat... so here is the humble version.

Looks good hm? Well my brother and parents liked it. My sister just ate the rice.

Here is a fried tofu. I like the outside crumb batter thingy, because it's crispy, but doesn't taste oily [although it IS oily]. The sauce is also nice although I don't think I'm too partial to it... I prefer pieces of avocado sushi more.

I know that sushi restaurants are generally more expensive than say, Italian restaurants, especially where I live. I sorely miss ParknShop with its $4 sushi [50c!!], occasionally lowered down to $2. However, we make sushi a lot at home, but it never seems as "legit" as the sushi at the stores, even though we use sushi rice and vinegar and nori. Perhaps we all go to sushi restaurants for the scenery, the dimmed lights, the tea [I'm not a tea fanatic so it's just... plain green tea to me], the cute plates and table-suitable bottles of soy sauce.

I mean, why do some people go to restaurants that sell really expensive yet mediocre food? It's just because they can then say, "Dude, I've been to this sick-famous restaurant...that you can't afford to go to!"

Conversely, going out to eat is considered icky if one is talking about college dining hall food. I don't understand why people think it's okay to speak badly about college restaurants, yet speak well of fast food places or other restaurants that offer the same food.

I suppose it has something to do with marketing; when was the last time a sushi store was advertised as elegant, healthy, and for the 1337? Oh, pretty much always. But, eating avocado sushi is definitely not balanced! With soy sauce, avocado sushi is too much sodium and too little protein.

Well, what about the animal eaters, then? Well, in this case, too much protein and cholesterol (?) and too few vitamins and minerals. Oh, and too much sodium.

It's not advertised that way, though... and I'm not sure why I'm analysing this, because I do like sushi a lot and I should actually be making of list that explain why sushi ought to be cheaper...

Samurai Sushi

I lacked a camera.

My mum took both my camera and phone to NYC today, so I couldn't take pictures of the food that I consumed. I can, however, describe the sushi with such utter detail that your keyboard will break down due to drool.

Or not, since it wasn't that big of a deal. The only reason we went to Samurai Sushi for dinner is that my sister wanted to eat sushi rice. Oh, and I suppose, also that my dad thinks that cooking is for females.

So, my sister consumed maybe 50ml of Sprite, two pieces of raw salmon, half a piece of another fish, too much soy sauce, and half a bowl of rice. My dad got this plate of sashimi, which came with some miso soup and some salad with ginger dressing. I distinctly remember there being one cherry tomato in the salad, last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. I suppose the staff decided that tomatoes aren't important to their restaurant menu, since the only thing WITH cherry tomatoes was the salad. I suppose this is a wise choice, even though I now have an empty space in my expandable stomach, shaped just like a cherry tomato.

Since I don't consume fish, I got this vegetable sushi. It was a lot of pieces of pickled radish [which I don't really like], pickled carrot [eh, okay], raw sprouts [not enough], raw cucumber [awesome!] and one piece of avocado, wrapped in rice and a piece of nori. I was pretty devastated [okay, overstatement] by the fact that there was only one piece of avocado in each piece of sushi [there were 5 pieces of sushi]. I LOVE AVOCADO! Why give me two pieces of pickled radish per piece of sushi, yet only leave me one meagre chunk of avocado?

The raw sprouts were cool, though, since my mum has never let me eat sprouts raw before. Actually, she never used to let me eat peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, or spinach raw, until I read recipe books and realised that these plants aren't toxic fresh out of the earth.

In conclusion, I lacked a lot of protein in this meal. I think that I should invent gluten/soy salmon sashimi substitute, although I personally don't miss the taste of fish anymore... [but this may be a different story in HK].