Hisashiburi Taiwan sushi

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It's the day after mom's birthday, and she decided that she wanted to relax and dine out for dinner. Japanese is her preferred cuisine, so I scrambled to find a place for sushi that doesn't break the bank. I seem to remember hearing people mention Yo Sushi (游壽司), and a quick check shows that the pricing seems "reasonable", so I quickly booked seats at their Zhongshan branch (中山店) this afternoon while meeting up with a friend for coffee late (second) lunch...

We arrived and waited a few minutes before being seated at the 12-seat main counter for the second seating. Our chef quickly explained how things worked, but I turns out I didn't understand what he was telling me. I did tell him, though, that I didn't want any tuna.

Our appetizer was a small bowl with bigfin reef squid and wakame (アオリイカ 若布), with cucumber and topped with some chiffonade of breakfast radish.

Alaskan pink shrimp (甘海老)

Red seabream (鯛) - with some some shaved yuzu (柚子) zest on top.

Abalone (鮑) - pretty tender.

Yellowtail (鰤) - smoky and tasted a little bitter after being torched.

We then started the nigiri sushi (握り寿司) portion of our meal:

Yellowtail (鰤) - very lightly torched, then topped with spicy grated radish (もみじおろし) and scallion sprouts (芽ねぎ).

Bigfin reef squid (アオリイカ) - scored with a criss-cross pattern and sprinkled with salt on top.

Oyster (牡蠣) - from Kyushu. Served in ponzu (ポン酢) with spicy grated radish and wakame.

Burdock roll (牛蒡巻き) - curiously, we were served a roll with chiffonade of both deep-fried burdock as well as fresh apple, seasoned with some mayo and furikake (振り掛け). Very crunchy, and pretty interesting. No rice here, though.

Splendid alfonsino (金目鯛) - torched to melt the delicious fat. So tasty.

Botan shrimp (牡丹海老) - with a dab of kanimiso (蟹味噌) on top. I didn't have any issue with this, but mom felt the flavors don't match.

Scallop isobeyaki (帆立貝磯辺焼) - surprising that it's a little spicy.

Next came the head of the botan shrimp, which was grilled and served with a little bit of rice.

Cobia (須義) - torched. Not one of my favorite fish.

Japanese green sea urchin (馬糞雲丹)

Striped jack (縞鯵) - we were initially offered salmon, but I said no. This came thick cut and had a nice texture.

Flounder wing (鮃縁側) - torched to melt the fat, which made it very tasty, but still retained some of the crunch. Served with a dab of mentaiko (明太子) and diced spring onions.

I had obviously misunderstood how things work here. I thought this was a fixed-price omakase (お任せ), but as it turned out, you can order as many or as little as you want. I was wondering why I hadn't been offered a substitute for turning down fatty tuna, but apparently chef simply skipped that piece for me. Well, I wanted something else, and as some others were getting bonito, I decided that I wanted it, too.

Bonito (鰹) - this was smoked on the skin side so the smoky flavors were pretty heavy. Nice.

Clam soup - this was pretty nice, with 4 big clams and a piece of fish head in the milky soup. Of course I let dad enjoy the fish head after I was done with the clams.

Housemade pudding (自家製プリン) - this was actually pretty good, if a little on the small side. A satisfying end to our dinner.

This was reasonably filling, and the pricing was certainly reasonable. Happy to have checked out this sushi joint for that ol' familiar Taiwanese taste. I even saw our neighbors request a "three-in-one (三合一)"... The glaring lack of acidity in the rice, along with those different toppings used, was a reminder that this ain't the edomae (江戸前) style I'm more used to nowadays.