Tokyo: Umai Sushikan at Tsukiji

During our last two days in Tokyo, it was raining non stop, which was quite a shame, since we had planned an early morning trip to Tsukiji fish market. Since none of us had no felt like getting up at 4 in the morning with the rain poring down our backs, and since I had visited Tskuji previously and seen the tuna auctions, we decided to make our Tskuji visit a lunch excursion instead

Our intention was to eat at Sushi Dai, but the line outside was discouragingly long, so we gave up and decided to have lunch at cozy-looking Umai Sushikan instead.

Umai Sushikan in Tskuji is part of a larger chain, but do not let this scare you off, since the place feels really intimate and cozy. We sat down at the counter in order to get an undisturbed view of the chefs demonstrating their skills. We were served green tea in funny cups with pictures and names of various sushis and decided quickly to order the Chef’s Choice menu, which among other goodies included ikura (salmon roe), anago (salt water eel) and Poul’s big fear; uni (sea urchin).

It was a lot of sushi, and midway, I already started to feel satiated. Everything tasted so great and so fresh in a way that you rarely find outside Japan. My uni sushi was really good, so I convinced Poul to give the sea urchin a second chance. He did so, with fairly disastrous results. Poul virtually eats everything, but he really had to struggle to keep sea urchin in his mouth and not spit it out on the plate. I felt a little sorry for the chef who was watching us anxiously as Poul forced himself to swallow the last sushi bits. Afterwards, we had to go to Starbucks and buy a cookie to remove all traces of sea urchin in Poul’s mouth, and for the remaining part of the trip, he avoided everything sushi-like.

Another nice sushi chain in Tokyo is Sushi Zanmai. Read about my visit to the Sushi Zanmai honten branch in Tsukiji here >>

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