I Like My Sushi in a Boat

I don’t know about you, but I like having my sushi presented to me in a boat. When you look at the menu at some Japanese restaurants, you see pictures of their sushi nicely placed in a wooden boat instead of a plate. Every time I saw that, I would imagine that my food would come in a boat. Alas, my hopes always dropped when I saw the waiter/waitress approach my table with a plate. You’d think that I’d learn to give up hope on these sushi boats over time but I haven’t yet.

Recently I went to a restaurant in Toronto called Memories of Japan. It is quite a large restaurant that seats approximately 300 guests, and provides them with a choice of sitting at a Teppanyaki table or at a regular dining table. Teppanyaki is always entertaining to watch but it is more enjoyable if you are in a larger group, so we opted for a dining table this time.

We ordered a combo meant for two people and containing a variety of food. It started out with Miso Soup and salad for both people, followed by tempura and a number of other appetizers, and finally the sushi! I should mention that there was a whole bunch of sushi! To get a feel, there were 29 pieces of assorted sashimi (raw fish), a choice of 3 types of sushi rolls from a list, with 8 rolls of each type (8×3 = 24) plus 8 more rolls of a fourth type of sushi. That’s 61 pieces in total! After the sushi course came dessert, which was a scoop of ice cream. Needless to say, I was so full after this meal that I skipped dinner and didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day.

The icing on the cake was that all this sushi was nicely presented to us in a wooden boat! My wish finally came true.