I like to eat gari and it taste really good with sushi. My habit is to eat 1 piece of it between sushis and it taste pretty good in that way. Actually when you are served a plate of nigiri sushi, ginger is always served (usually wasabi might not be served in real japanese restaurant, because it is already added to the sushi). The ginger(gari) is more than a decoration itself, it serves as a tool of dipping soy sauce! (that is somethine a lot of people don’t know, including me in the past). You are suppose to dip the soy sauce with the ginger and apply it to the top of the nigiri sushi before eating the sushi. It is the “proper” way of eating the sushi and I think it make sense because 1. you wouldn’t contaminate the soy sauce with the fish , 2. you won’t mix different flavors of fishes together, and 3. you add in the flavor of ginger into the fish. Hmmm, that is a good way of serving food.

This is the only good clip I saw on teaching how to do pickled ginger.

Homemade Pickled Ginger:

Tai is a commonname containing a variety of different fishes in the Pagellus catagory. The English commonname is (red), (blackspot) sea bream. I think this is not a very prominent fish in the US since I don’t see them being advertised a lot in Japanese restaurants here.

Probably one of the reason it did not get as popular in US is because of its inflexibility in the use of the fish as a cooking ingredient. It is a shiromi (white meat fish) and is mild in taste. Since sashimi in US has to be flash frozen before consumption, the taste would just be quite undesirable to consume as a nigiri sushi or sashimi. It would not be a good ingredient to make a chef’s creation role either. The texture is quite chunky, and since it is not a fatty fish, you can’t really bring in extra flavour in a fish. The next best thing besides making it in nigiri sushi might be grilling it with a sweet sauce.

Probably you should eat this fish either very fresh or don’t bother to eat it at all. It’s hard to find a good one in sashimi grade.

The abalone in the sushi is usually sliced raw in very thin slices (I wonder if it is poached slightly) . The himo (the legs, the overcoat and the ligament) of awabi is usually served as an appetitizer and is also very tasty.

Abalone is one of the more expensive shellfish among all sashimi. Besides Japanese, Chinese people treated abalone as a premium food. Often served in expensive restaurants, abalone is served steamed in a whole shell, or it can be used as ingredients in soups because of its very fresh taste. However due to over farming of abalone by human, the supply of this delicious seafood has dropped and the price of abalone has increased a lot since then. Most of the abalone that you are eating now might have been farm-raised, and these farm-raised abalone taste a lot more inferior than the wild caught ones (who knows what food they are being fed).

Abalone is high in cholesterol and should be consumed in moderate amount only.

Sushi Birthday Cake

I have been there for about 30-40 times so far, and, the restaurant have changed hands for at least 2 times over 3 years.

The thing that I appreciate is their chirashi.

The staffs are ok, not too bad and friendly in general.

One recently surprise: the new management decided to give the whole birthday party a 20% off (book in advance) if there is anyone in the group who has their birthday on that day. And they will include a complimentary sushi cake above – something I have never seen before. The outer rim is full of crackers with spicy tuna & jalapenos paste . The inner ring has 3 kinds of seaweed rolls(tuna,salmon and tamago). And the center ring has a bunch of futomaki rolls in it. I am impressed by the restaurant for the first time. (Probably I will give them a B grade on my birthday when I receieve so much goodies).

Besides for the big surprise, pleasant surprises nomore. The cooked food is bad. Their tempura is extremely non-Japanese where they don’t even use tempura platter to fry the tempura, they use cornstarch and breadcrumbs (not panko).

Good: Chirashi is good-valued, rolls are pretty innovative, only place for Sunday sushi buffet. 20% on birthday party.
Bad: Bad cooked food in general

Conclusion: You can only go there for sushi, and still don’t expect high quality fish.

Ann Arbor, Michigan
Address:715 N University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Phone:(734) 213-3044
Open Mon-Sat 10am-10pm; Sun 11:30am-9pm

Ikura is the Japanese word for salmon roe.

The name comes from “ikra” the Russian word for (caviar). It is a high value seafood and people have treated it as a delicacy in different cuisines.

In terms of taste, ikura taste very fishy, and the strong fishy taste would definitely turn off a lot of non-seafood lovers. Caviar (Ikura) is a love-it-or-hate-it type of food. As a seafood lover myself, ikura roll is almost my favourite because of its very strong and pungent afterbreath. Fresh salmon roes should taste like a bit like fresh fish liver oil.

In terms of nutrition value, Ikura (salmon roe) is full of protein, and cholesterol. Since salmon roe is just like a miniature version of a chicken egg, and 1 chicken egg would set you up for 1 day of suggested cholesterol intake, you should seriously think to resist the temptation, although most likely your attempt would be futile if you are a big fan of ikura.

Ikura can be served on the side as sashimi in complement with the other sushis, it can also be a main dish by serving with a bowl of rice (ikura-don). In sushi item, it is usually served in a tekka roll with seaweed and in chef creation rolls it is often used as a premium ingredient.

I am very surprised to see that hokkigai is not so prominent in the US.

Hokkigai clam is a specialty item in Hokkaido Japan and you can buy frozen ones. Surf clam has a crispier texture than the akagai and abalone and the meat that you are served in sushi is the top part of the cleaned surf clam, with all the rest of the meat(the intestines and the himo) detached.

In my experience, the hokkigai surf clam is served raw, but it will taste okay even if you poached it in a hot pot or shabu-shabu. Usually you do that for low grade hokkigai, but you should save it for sashimi for the good ones.

The profile picture to the right shows a natural hokkigai surf clam. The surf clam should look pinkish white in the lower body and it should look dark red on the tip of the clam. I have see some hokkigai with bright red top and a white bottom and I highly suspect they are counterfeits.

Scallop is a simple delicacy compared to the other more exotic seashell options. You will expect them often in a sushi restaurant. I think scallop only taste good when served raw and it loses a great deal of its taste when cooked. You can taste the Unami (rumoured 5th sense of taste, representing freshness, just like eating MSG) of the scallop when it is served fresh. And it tastes very good in that way.

You should look for sushi grade scallop. In the US the sushi grade scallops are flash frozen and thawed before it is consumed as an attempt to kill all the parasites in the seafood. Usually it should do the job, but you can avoid eating them. For I would take the risk in order to enjoy sushi properly. If you avoid sushi, you should avoid oyster in the first place. There are TONS of bacteria in oyster because of the nature of how it thrives. Raw oyster contains the highes amount of hepatitus bacteria and just the sheer thought of it makes me sick. Nowadays I don’t eat oyster raw (or just one) but I eat sushi without any problem. My motto is cooked food can be contaminated also, so it is not the food but the chef that prepares the food.

Unfortunately flash frozen sushi will usually tarnish the taste and texture of sushi fish, but recently it is required by the FDA that all fishes (except tuna!! must be because of the expensive otoro) has to be flash frozen. So go to Japan or elsewhere if you want to try the 100% fresh scallop.

Bigger shrimp has a better texture and usually is me pricey. As some people are not very used to eating meat raw, it might be a good idea to eat these crustacean cooked because they might contain quite a lot of bacterias if uncooked. Actually I always think that raw crustaceans would have more bacteria than raw sea fish. But then eating a piece or two of them is still a delicacy.

Shrimp can also be made in tempura and tempura shrimp appears in a lot of chef creation rolls that I will mention later on. I think it will blend well with almost every ingredient to give a full and rich flavor.

As with other seafood, shrimp is high in calcium and protein but low in food energy. A shrimp-based meal is also a significant source of cholesterol, from 7 mg to 251 mg per 100 g of shrimp, depending on the method of preparation.

You can try shrimp sushi in different sizes:

Cooked Ebi

Raw Ebi

Big Ebi

Huge Ebi

MONSTER Ebi

(no such thing…look for a lobster maybe)

When used in sushi, octopus meat is poached slightly before being used. (You have to because octopus skin is full of bacterias and possibly parasites) Before it is cooked, octopus skin is semi-transparent and it will turn into a solid white colour after being cooked briefly. The cut of octopus meat is especially important because if you made too thick a cut, the sliced octopus will be too thick to chew on. It takes a sushi master to do the job well, because the octopus meat is so slippery and slimy that it is hard to slice it very thin. Another thing is Octopus meat is very hard to digest and it might make the digestion easier if you slice it thinner to begin with.

Octopus babies(little octopuses) is marinated in some salt, sugar, garlic and some other “natura ingredients” (Including red pigments) to be served as an appetitzer. Usually it looks bloody red in appearance and while it taste good in the first few bite, you will lose your sense of taste in a few bites. My thought on the appetitizer: 1 is great, 2 is good, 3 is enough.

Octopus is high in cholesterol but octopus contains a lot of taurine which is beneficial to brian health. Octopus has a big brain and no wonder it is a smart predator in the ocean. But then, yummy yummy.

Yellowtail is the English translation for “hamachi “in the Japanese restaurants.   However the Japanese have tons of names for fish, and “hamachi” only means the young yellow tail.

Variants of Yellowtails incluide:

1. Hiramasa: Yellowtail amberjack

2. Inada (very young yellowtail)

3. Buri(old yellowtail)

Yellowtail is a kind of shiromi(white meat fish) and is one of the milder tasting fish among all sashimi fish and you should probably eat it first in a sushi or sashimi meal.     That is why some in hamachi handrolls and hamachi tekka rolls, green onion is mixed with the sushi fish to enhance the flavor of the fish.

Sadly enough, since almost all of the fish in US (except Tuna, I think) are flash frozen*.   Hamachi will taste even blender without being ultra fresh.   In the worst cases, it would taste like watery and you can feel the “iciness” of the flash freeze process.

*According to New Hampshire’s WMUR television station, fish that is suitable for eating raw must be frozen for seven days at negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit, or flash frozen for 15 hours at negative 31 degrees.   This is an effort to kill all the parasites in the fish.    However, the sashimi is tarnished in the process.   I have heard that nowadays they have a better flash freezing technology so it can preserve the fish better in the flash freezing process but I have yet to try some good ones.

Tuna is the twin brother of salmon in US at the very least.   In fact, US restaurants like to “abuse” salmon and tuna in my opinion.  Their creation rolls are mainly made from salmon and tuna.

Regular tuna has a much milder taste, since it does not have a high level of fat like salmon does, however it’s taste is pungent and sharp in a mild way.    Since tuna has a high level of iron, you can really feel the iron in the fish.

Once again, tuna in the US might look bright red and that might not be the best ones that you should eat.  Tunas are not suppose to look glossy red again,  the best ones that I’ve had in Japan are actually darkish red with a watery texture on the outside.   Since regular tuna has quite some iron inside, it should look a bit dull in color naturally.

However, fatty tuna are considered an expensive fish in Japan, especially for its variant blue fin tuna and even more so their fatty part, otoro.   The more expensive variant is almost 5 times more expensive than the regular ones.

Grade S blue fin fatty tuna is not available for export though.   Most likely the otoro that is offered internationally is “chutoro” (mid-section fatty tuna) instead.  You really need to eat it in Japan and right next to the fish market sometimes to make sure it’s ultra fresh.

Tier 3: Regular Tuna

Tier 2: Chutoro

Tier 1: Otoro