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HK: Sushi Kuu (Aug. 2013)
Author: Victor
Exec Chef: Satoru Mukogawa
My Sushi Chef: Ivan Ko
August 28, 2013
I arrived in Hong Kong after a few fun nights in Chengdu, China. I was going to be in HK for only a few days, so I wanted to make sure I got the chance to eat something really delicious while I was there. I was craving good sushi, and I had heard about Sushi Kuu before, but I didn’t exactly go ahead and make the reservation. I was being lazy…
What did happen, though, was that I got dinner in Central with a couple of friends from New York (some now live in HK). After dinner, I was still hungry, so I walked by Kuu and checked it out to see if there was space at the sushi bar. There was! My sushi chef was named Ivan, and I quickly went with the Chef’s Omakase. I didn’t exactly have the calories to spare, but I totally ignored that. A new high-end sushi restaurant to try! I can’t let simple calories hold me back!
Ivan was pretty quiet for the first few courses, but after we got to the sushi part of the meal he opened up more. I feel like people in HK don’t really interact with sushi chefs nearly as much as they do in, for instance NYC. (Then again, there was a party of two nearby having a LOT of fun and drinking a massive amount of alcohol. They were pretty much sharing shots with other chefs/management and so on. That was pretty entertaining hahaha.)
Sydney: sushi e (Aug. 2013)
Exec Chef: Nobuyuki Ura
My Sushi Chef: Jin
Website: http://merivale.com.au/sushie
Date: August 15, 2013
After eating as Yoshii the previous night, I spontaneously decided to get lunch at sushi e the next afternoon. I made reservations, but the restaurant wasn’t too crowded. I’m not sure how crowded it gets for dinners, but you could definitely make last-minute reservations for the lunch scene (at least on weekdays).
The restaurant’s located on the 4th level of the Establishment Hotel, located in Sydney’s CBD. There are a bunch of sushi bar seats as well as some small, more intimate tables that are located near the windows. There’s a lot of sunlight (almost too much for photography!).
I was seated near a sushi chef named Jin, and he turned out to be a great guy—as well as a great sushi chef to pair with me. I generally like being able to talk with my chefs a lot when at sushi bars, and he was really friendly! We talked about where he worked in the past, why he’s in Sydney, what he wants to do in the future, and so on. I really should have gotten his card or something… Oh well!
Notes on the sushi:
1. The fish selection is MUCH better than Yoshii’s. I think the fish might be fresher, too.
2. There was a lot of fish in proportion to the amount of rice per piece. I personally would have preferred a more balanced proportion, but I can see that some people would like the proportions here. (Most of my friends generally complain about too much rice and rarely complain about too much fish—however, that might be because the former is much more common.)
3. The rice was a little grainy. The temperature was fine for the most part, though at times it was slightly cold.
Overall, I thought the sushi was better here than at Yoshii.
Sydney: Yoshii (Aug. 2013)
Chef: Yoshii Ryuichi
Website: http://www.yoshii.com.au/main.html
Date: August 14, 2013
I haven’t posted at all on this blog for months, and I apologize for that. I’ve been traveling a lot, and I just got lazy. I’m going to try to update a liiiiiiiiiiittle more often now!
For most of August, I traveled around New Zealand and Australia. I went to Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, and Melbourne, and it was pretty awesome to be able to check out those cities. I already did a post on Sidart (Auckland), and I’ll be doing Yoshii, a pretty high-end Japanese restaurant in Sydney, here.
I found out about the restaurant by googling around to see what the top Japanese restaurants in Sydney were. Both Tetsuya’s and Yoshii’s came up the most frequently, but Tetsuya’s was booked for quite a while. I called and made a short-notice reservation, and next thing I knew I was at the restaurant! The restaurant was actually fairly empty. Maybe this was because it was a Wednesday evening. Still… I’m not sure how they’re making money; I only saw about four or five other customers while I was there.
I ordered a set menu that consisted of appetizers, sashimi, a few mains, sushi, and dessert! I asked for no dessert, though; I was way over my caloric budget for the day. I had to cut my losses somewhere…
Monte
Victor
tadv3
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