We’re back in KL, Peninsular Malaysia on a weeklong holiday during the Hari Raya school break. While we love Sarawak and all the unique foods it has to offer (like durian flowers), there are some dishes you just can’t get in Kuching, like Mum’s popiah.
It’s been a while since we were last in KL so we’ve got some pent-up food cravings to satisfy. Halfway through our trip, here’s a short list of things we’ve eaten so far.
We eat fugu (pufferfish / blowfish) sushi in Japan and live to tell about it.
photo by Furibond. (License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic).
Ever since we first started talking about this Japan trip, we wanted to go see the Tsukiji Fish Market, the largest fish market in the world. We love good sushi, and it can’t get any better than eating it right at Tsukiji. Annie actually did go and have sushi at Tsukiji one day, but I was at work and couldn’t join her. So we made plans to go to Tsukiji at night after work.
Unfortunately, the plans fell through and we ended up having an awesome kaiseki dinner in Aoyama that night instead. In the meantime, our friend Akiko, who had guided us to a great meal at Za-Watani Izakaya, suggested that we not go to Tsukiji at night. She recommended going to a restaurant closer to us and put our money into sushi rather than train tickets. Brilliant!
She even found us a sushi restaurant that advertised their fish as being from Tsukiji Market: Asahisushi, located on the 9th floor of the Odakyu Department Store, right above Machida Station. Annie was spending the day in Tokyo with her good friend Yuko, so we decided to meet at Machida Station after work and then go up for dinner.
We went to Sakae Sushi in Burlingame, CA to celebrate Annie’s birthday with some of the best sushi in the Bay Area. In Part 1, we talked about all the great sashimi we had. Now it’s time to talk sushi…nigiri sushi.
When most Americans think of sushi, they think of California rolls, Caterpillar rolls, Dragon rolls, etc. You know, a tube of rice and relatively small pieces of fish mixed with the likes of cucumber, avocado, fake crab, cream cheese, mayonnaise, you name it. Sometimes it’s even drizzled with a sweet sauce. It’s basically a way to avoid tasting raw fish, which I guess is not big with the Western palate. (No wonder I see a lot of people absolutely drown their sushi in soy sauce and horseradish!)
Japanese do eat rolled sushi (called maki) but they don’t tend to hide the fish. Nigiri sushi puts that fish right on top. And that’s the way we like it!
Continue reading Sensational Sushi at Sakae Sushi (Burlingame), Part 2
Saturday was Annie’s birthday, and we wanted to go out for a special sushi meal to celebrate the occasion. We had talked about going back to see our favorite sushi chef, Ryo of Sushi-Man in San Francisco. But Ryo was tragically killed in January, and we were left looking for a restaurant worthy to replace the high quality of sushi and service that Ryo gave to us.
In recent months, we had been going to Akane in Los Altos to get our sushi fix because it was closer to us, was more affordable, and served some pretty high quality sushi there. We found this place on the “Big List of Peninsula Sushi”, where Akane came in at #2. #1 on the list? Sakae Sushi in Burlingame.
I made reservations at the bar for the two of us on Saturday night. We knew we were going to get top quality fish, so we had no problems going omakase. But would we make a connection with the chef, as we did with Ryo?
Continue reading Sensational Sushi at Sakae Sushi (Burlingame), Part 1