Sushi to the rescue

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It's lunar new year's eve, and it's just the two of us at home tonight. Sankala doesn't feel like cooking, and dine-in service continues to be banned by the government. So that leaves us with ordering takeout. Ordering hot food is problematic as we discovered last year, since it's unlikely we would be enjoying it at the correct serving temperature without reheating... and likely overcooking it in the process. So ideally it would be something which would not need to be enjoyed piping hot - or perhaps we order something from a place that is a few minutes' walk from our home.

Yesterday, after a few days of me pestering him with requests, Fujimoto Kenichi (藤本健一) - who is still waiting for his Sushi Fujimoto (鮨ふじもと) to be done with the renovations and open - finally announced that they would have chirashi sushi (ちらし寿司) available for takeaway for tonight.　This was exactly what I had been waiting for, so I placed my order immediately.

I went to pick up this afternoon, and got a quick tour from Fujimoto-san. The renovations were definitely not finished, so he doesn't have an exact date when he would expect to open.

Dinner time came around, and we had the perfect setting at home. Our mood lighting was provided not by romantic candles but by the Light Soy by Heliograf. Sankala was really happy with I got this light, and having it on the table next to our sushi could not have been more appropriate.

Bara chirashi sushi (バラ散らし寿司) - Fujimoto-san previously had offered this during one of the early rounds of dining ban when he was at Sushi Saito (鮨 さいとう), so it made sense that he was offering it now, especially before the restaurant could operate and generate some revenue.

He remembered that I preferred not to have tuna, so this came with sea urchin (雲丹), young yellowtail (鰤), marinated salmon roe (イクラ), conger eel (穴子), octopus (蛸), gizzard shad (小肌), Japanese tiger prawn (車海老), egg custard (卵焼き), dried gourd (干瓢), and cucumber.

Futomaki (太巻き) - this was clearly not the amazing version currently made by Kubota-san at Saito, but for takeaway it's not bad at all. We had tiger prawn, conger eel, egg custard, cucumber, and sesame seeds.

2011 Ten Minutes by Tractor Blanc de Blancs - definitely showing some maturity on the palate, good depth with marmalade and some bitterness.

It's nice to have a quiet evening at home with just the two of us. We wish that we could be in Taipei with my parents, but with the requirement to quarnatine for a total of 28 days that's just not something we want to entertain at this point. This marks the second lunar new year where I'm not able to hug my parents and enjoy mom's cooking, and I really hope things can "normalize" soon so that families like ours are no longer separated.