Tag: sushi

Sushi Search Part 2 (long awaited)

IMG_20190726_164850So if you’re a frequent follower of my blog you’ll know that I tend to be slightly more budget conscious than most.

Sadly there is not a single place that sells sushi in the town where I stay- we used to have an Ocean Basket but sadly they closed down. I have a feeling my superior consumption of their delicious bread may have contributed to their closing.

Whenever I wish to consume sushi there is always other costs like the travel costs to get to whichever establishment I intend on consuming sushi at. Therefore for this review I went to the closest sushi place only one town over.

Despatch SuperSpar – yes they are a supermarket but they have an amazing sushi chef on staff.

Friday afternoon I decided to treat my friend and myself to some delicious sushi. I was very surprised when I walked into Spar at about 14:30 that the sushi chef was on lunch. Strange timing – month end weekend, just as the schools have come out. I don’t pretend to know how their scheduling works though- just found it odd.

Luckily there was some sushi in the fridge! I ended up getting two trays of salmon packed sushi! I have always wanted to try Graca wine with sushi (I think this might have been inspired by the John Dory’s ad) and decided this was the day! The wine was amazing with and without the sushi – tasted similar to champagne but better.

To my surprise the wine was on special for R38.99 at TOPS so I was over the moon. I ended up buying R160 worth of sushi and R40 of wine. So the food and drink cost me R200 and the fuel R50. So sushi for two people worked out to be R250.

When I finally got to my friend’s house later that afternoon I realised that I had forgotten to take chopsticks. This made for a very interesting finger food experience, I don’t like getting my hands dirty so luckily my friend did offer me a set of chopsticks she had at home.

The sushi itself was delicious! I would have preferred more mayonnaise on some of the items, like the salmon roses but sadly since the chef was on lunch I wasn’t able to get extra mayo. I must say only one of my pieces of sushi broke and that was more my error than anything else. I would also have loved to get some sashimi but once again could only get what was available on the shelf.

There is a definite level of convenience being able to get some take away sushi just one town over, but also has its drawbacks like the chef being on lunch.

I would buy sushi there again, as it’s the closest sushi place to me and is really affordable. Sometimes it pays to stay home.

May you find delicious & affordable take away places in your life!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

  1. Know when the chef goes on lunch
  2. You don’t need to spend a boat load of money for something great
  3. When wine goes on special buy lots!

 

Sushi Search – Part One of Many

IMG_20190515_215636I have decided to take the challenge upon myself to check out all the (affordable) sushi places in P.E. and surrounding areas and review them on my blog; so that you my dear friends and followers can avoid a bad sushi experience. (This definitely has nothing at all to do with the fact that I love sushi myself). The first place I decided to try out was TORO Sushi, Teppanyaki & Seafood.

A friend of mine and I decided we were in the mood to go out- sushi sounded like a great idea and I had been dying to try out the buffet at TORO. Their sushi buffet is really well priced at R169.00 for all you can eat sushi (there are some restrictions but we’ll get to those in a bit), and you also get 4 salmon roses and 4 small pieces of sashimi.

They were running a contest at the time (and I think they still are) where if you do the buffet and stack your different coloured plates, you need to take a selfie with your stacked plates and tag TORO on Instagram or Facebook to win a voucher. However when we got there we were told that when doing the buffet you are only allowed to take white plates off the conveyer belt at the sushi bar, so this was quite confusing. We didn’t enquire further though because at the end of the day we didn’t really care that much about the contest but more about the fact that we could finally enjoy this experience together.

So we were 4 friends who decided to go to TORO and 3 of us did the buffet. You can’t share with someone not doing the buffet though (let’s just say we learned this through experience)  just so you know for when you go try them out! You have two options, you can either take sushi off the conveyer belt (white plates only though) or you can order off the menu on your table (you can do both if you want as well).

I opted for ordering off the menu as we were sitting far away from the sushi bar and I would find it awkward to constantly walk through the rest of the patrons. I had avocado & cream cheese California rolls as well as salmon & cream cheese California rolls which were absolutely divine and decadent! I did however realise that both the choices of ordering off the menu and ordering sushi with cream cheese in were big mistakes – how so, you may ask?

When you order off the menu, your sushi takes a while to get to the table hence giving the sushi you already ate time to digest. This causes you to fill up a lot quicker than you would want to at an ALL YOU CAN EAT sushi buffet, and the cream cheese being so rich also had a hand in me eating a lot less than I would have anticipated!

I was slightly disappointed by the amount of mayonnaise on my salmon roses, but luckily we had a very hard working waiter and he went to get extra mayo for my salmon roses. Thank you, Jacques!

All in all, it was an amazing experience! The food was great even though I ate less than I would have hoped, and the company was amazing.

You know that table at the restaurant that makes everyone else uncomfortable with the amount of fun they’re having? Yeah, we were that table! There was a man sitting at a table adjacent to ours and he enjoyed eavesdropping on our silly conversations so much that he bought a round of shooters for our table.

Sometimes when you look forward to an experience for a long time it doesn’t live up to your expectations, but my time at TORO really did. The food was good but the company was better, and I’m pretty sure we made our waiter blush a few times as well.

Definitely go give TORO Sushi, Teppanyaki & Seafood a try!

Love Jo xo

 

Jo’s Take Aways

  1. Take good company with
  2. Sit at the sushi bar to consume more food
  3. Have extra mayo for the table
  4. Be nice to your waiter – give a decent tip

For photos of the evening check out my instagram @imjoxo