Minamishima: Yummy, yummy, yummy, sushi in my tummy!

Well, this is a very late post because we tried this place out for emmy’s birthday (her birthday tradition is to try a new authentic Japanese restaurant) which was in November, so apologies for holding out so long on this delicious (but expensive) sushi restaurant. The head chef at Minamishima used to work at Kenzan, so the quality had to be pretty high. This post will be easy but also a little boring, we took pictures (thanks to my photographer, emmy :)) of every one of the fifteen dishes as well as the extra dessert that we ordered (which we totally shouldn’t have but we did because we’re gluttons), and I took notes on all of them especially so that I could post them here. So without further ado, the pictures (I’ll number them so that you can easily match the picture to the description):

1. Tempura asparagus – it’s asparagus with some tempura batter, nothing special.
2. Australian King dory, nothing noted so I’m guessing it was nothing special, which by these standards must mean quality sushi but not outstanding.
3. Garfish, the only comment is that emmy thought that the ginger was overpowering.
4. Sea perch with white radish, this must be one of the favourites because the description is: explosion of flavours with something sour (presumably the sour was something very nice).
5. Calamari, has sour lemon-y zest and was cut amazingly, like noodles.
6. NZ Scampi, which looks like a prawn but was in fact like jelly, not sure what that means but sounds delicious.
7. Japanese scallop with soy sauce, tender, that is all, must be good.
8. Akagai shellfish from Japan, like clam, so must’ve been a bit chewy.
9. Japanese flounder cut from the fin, had a very rich sauce, which was very yummy.
10. Bluefin tuna belly from Japan, this was the absolute most amazing thing ever.
11. Seared bluefin tuna belly, not as good as the raw cut, but still, amazing.
12. Hokkaido sea urchin, very mushy, which means, the texture was like a perfect custard.
13. Japanese cured mackerel with vinegar rice, too bad it came after the tuna belly.
14. Japanese saltwater eel, very sweet.
15. Egg sushi (not pictured) but tasted like chiffon cake (which makes sense).
16. Clam soup, nothing much here, the stock didn’t have much flavour.
17. Red bean yoghurt with cherry blossom ice cream, this was okay but nothing was going to top that tuna belly.
18. We ordered the special dessert because we’ll probably never go back there, we were totally going to explode at this point, but we had to finish it off. The description of the dessert being a zen garden actually was better than the dessert itself, it was all right but nothing special, this place is a sushi restaurant after all, it would be hard for the dessert to stand up to the level of the sushi.

I don’t know how we ended up with 18 dishes, it was only meant to be 15, but any way, super expensive but it probably was the best sushi that we’ve ever had, maybe we can try something similar in Japan next time, if we sell our functional and healthy organs. That’s it for now, we just went to Shoya for Valentines Day, so expect another post about that soon (hopefully a little more fun).

Note: I forgot to mention that Minamishima came over and had a chat with us (can’t remember when during the meal), told us that he was from the central region near where we visited in July, seemed like a nice bloke, emmy tried to impress him by speaking some Japanese :D, maybe he gave us some extra tuna belly for that (we got three pieces if I remember correctly).