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 Nick Dent’s ticket to ride on Sushi Choo takes him to unexpected places.
My old friend, sushi chef Shaun Presland, has been busy lately. No sooner was his decadent diner Teppanyaki up and running in March (in George Street’s Ivy) than he set to work on Sushi Choo, a sushi train on the ground floor of the same complex, targeted at lunchtime workers as well as night-time revellers.
I have mentioned in this column before that I can’t stand sushi trains. To me they contradict the central tenet of sushi: fish so fresh you can eat it raw. How fresh can it be if it’s been on a conveyor belt for ages? But then, Sushi Choo is to your typical sushi train what the Indian Pacific is to the Sydney monorail: an epic adventure, rather than an outdated novelty.
The restaurant occupies a spacious room with enormous red lanterns and two white marble sushi-train bars wide and long enough to be fashion catwalks. Attentive waiters circle the room in tandem with the seafood.
Presland invited me to check out Sushi Choo in its second week. (The meal was free, so this review is not impartial.) We grab a few plates off the train; spider (soft shell crab) rolls are $7 and pretty good. Tuna nigiri is also $7, and holding up well despite its journey. Presland’s tamago (omelette nigiri) is always a sweet treat, and a steal at $4.
I can see that the train will be a boon when the place is crowded with hungry party people, but I want to choose from the ‘off the rails’ menu – and so should any serious foodie.
Presland continues to combine sashimi with South American flavours, a legacy of his time at Nobu Atlantis in the Bahamas. Ditching soy sauce and wasabi in favour of sea salt and chilli are among his favourite tricks. The oilier the fish, the hotter the spice he uses, because the oil masks the heat. He’s got the balance down to a fine art.
A brilliant Kingfish tataki ($15) comes in a vinegar garlic dressing with a very thin slice of jalapeno pepper straddling each piece of fish. Little slices of raw snapper ($10) are dressed in citrussy yuzu white soy; each is anointed with a bright red dot of Peruvian rocoto chilli paste on a tiny coriander leaf. It looks like a plate of Japanese flags and tastes like heaven.
On the cooked side of the equation, creamy spicy prawn ($10) is decadent dish of tempura Crystal bay prawns in a sauce of mayonnaise with chilli garlic sambal. It’s practically a curry – with the added satisfying crunch of tempura.
But tonight’s absolute show-stopper is sashimi pizza ($12). We’re not talking okonomiyaki, the stodgy, pizza-like Japanese omelette, but something new: curls of exquisite chopped tuna sashimi on a thin, crisp tortilla, with sliced cherry tomato and slivers of kalamata olive and avocado, criss-crossed with wasabi aioli. Tomato and raw tuna: together at last, and their chemistry is sensational. Who knew?
I would never vouch for the freshness of sushi on any sushi train, anywhere. I don’t think anyone really can. But Sushi Choo is your chance to get at Shaun Presland’s cuisine for much less cash than at sushi e or Teppanyaki. This is what’s known as a hot ticket. All aboard, then.
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