£10 sushi at Shogun Sushi Bar

The other day, passing through The Mailbox, I found this board.

Shogun Sushi and Noodle Bar in The Mailbox has always offered all-you-can-eat sushi buffet for £10, but it used to be only for lunch time. Evidently, now, it is extended to all day, from 12 noon to 11 in the evening everyday (except Sunday, finishing at 10 o'clock).

There is 10% obligatory service charge on the final bill (it is written in small letters at the bottom of the board). As the sushi here is virtually self-service, it is slightly odd, but this is not a buffet restaurant, so probably we can swallow that.

In the present air of economic uncertainity, to be able to eat out knowing how much we will be spending is a good thing, I guess.

Metro's Woktastic Review

Woktastic, a new restaurant in Paradise Forum, received a glowing review on Metro newspaper on the 30th July. It got 4 out of 5 points.



Evidently it is a "Japanese" (Woktastic website calles its food more appropriately "fusion Japanese") restaurant somewhere between Wagamama and YO!sushi, offering ramen noodles, kare (curry in Japanese), teppan-yaki as well as belt-conveyor sushi dishes. According the reviewer, Annette Rubery, food is fresh and high in quality.

Price range seems similar to Wagamama as well. Main dishes from £5.75 to £9.95, and sushi is between £1.70 and £4.99. Reading through the menu I detect more Thai influence than in Wagamama Japanese.

Let me know what do you think if you have already visited there!

Woktastic Open

The new noodle and sushi bar in Paradise Forum, Woktastic, is now open.



I don't know exactly when it opened, but in should be this or the week before.

In front of the restaurant is this sign advatising an opening promotion offer. It promises sushi from £1 and noodles from £5.75, and 15% off for students.



I am not sure if the food should be more expensive when the offer ends, or the "promotion" is only about 15% discount for students. I don't know about sushi, but noodles FROM £5.75 is about right and should not be more expensive. Even sushi, three pieces of cucumber roll can cost £1.

I looked inside through the glass wall. It was rather dark (or maybe because it was too bright outside) and I could not see well, but definitely recognised a belt-conveyor.

Birmingham is suffering from lack of decent sushi place, and I hope Woktastic can fill the gap.

How to eat Japanese fermented soy beans (Nattō)

If you have Japanese friends, probably you have heard about Nattō.

It is fermented soy beans that one part of the Japanese people love so much that they cannot live without. And the other part, however, hates it. It is popular food in eastern part of Japan, but less so in the western part.

The reason of this deep divide is mainly the small of Nattō. As all the fermented foods, Nattō has a very particular and strong smell which is, if you are not used to it, a bad odour. Some say that the Chinese black beans are smelly, but there is no comparison with Nattō.

Also the non-Japanese people find this food disgusting. For foreigners, the problem is not only the smell, but also its sliminess. The Japanese people in general love slimy foods, but it is not the case for other nations. I have met only a couple of non-Japanese who said they like these fermented soy beans.

I heard that the Indonesians have something similar called "tempe", but they cook in a way that it does not smell as much as its Japanese cousin.

As I belong to the group that love Nattō, I enjoy enjoy eating it. Fortunately in Birmingham, we can find frozen Nattō in Chinese or Korean grocery stores. It costs three times more expensive than in Japan, but, I won't complain as it is probably brought frozen by air cargo (but it makes me feel guilty of carbon foot printing).

This is a packet of Nattō. I paid £1.40.



This packet contains 4 small containers of Nattō, as you see below. In a container, there are also a small packet of soy sauce based sauce and another of mustard.




I eat Nattō with raw egg. I put also some Japanese seven flavour chili. The white thing beneath is steamed rice.



And mix mix mix. Then I get this.



It is almost soupy because I did not put much rice, but usually people put more rice. The mixture of Nattō odour and raw egg smell is almost obscene. It is sooooo good.

I would not recommend this to anybody, as it is not for feint hearted, but if you happen to be lover of smelly food, this is the one for you. ha ha ha.


You can always find it in H-mart in Selly Oak, and sometimes also in Day-In in Arcadian Centre. This page will help you to find it, too.

http://www.wonderbirmingham.co.uk/birmingham/japanesefood_en.html

Live crab from the market

In Birmingham in-door market there are two shops selling shell fish. They almost always have live crabs and I have always been curious about them, so one day I decided to buy one.

It cost less than I expected, £3.30, but as it did not contain so much meat, it is still expensive.

Before cooking it, I tried to kill it with a knife, but it did not die! I saw on tv how to kill it, and I expected easier. In the end I had to cook it alive, and I am really sorry for poor creature.



With crab meat I made sushi. Nice.

Yellow Fin Tuna Sashimi

One Saturday I found very good looking tuna in the Indoor Market of Birmingham. This is how it looked like.



This piece costed about £7.5, for a bit less than 500g (was about £15/kilo). I asked the fishmonger if we could eat it raw. She said it must be all right as it was brought in that morning. I don't suppose this meant that it was fished on the same day, but bought in from the wholesale market.

Although I was told that it was safe to eat raw, to be extra-cautious, I decided to marinate one half in shoyu (soy sauce) and the other half in lemon juice and olive oil.



This is Zuke-don. "Zuke" means soy sauce marinated tuna sashimi in Japanese. This came really beautiful. I am not necessarily able to buy such a good tuna everyday even in Japan. I ate it with "Yuzu-kosho", which is Japanese condiment, mixture of a citrus fruit called yuzu and chili.



This is lemon marinated tuna. It was nice, but as nice was the zuke-don.

I would surely buy again, if I find such a good tuna again.