Wednesday, September 09, 2015

The Sushi Bar, Ngee Ann City

The Sushi Bar, nama yuba uni
nama yuba uni

My understanding of the word chirashi or chirashizushi has always been the standard definition of “scattered sushi”; representing scattered fish over sushi rice. Later on, I got acquainted with another similar type of donburi known as the kaisen don which is a literal translation of seafood rice bowl. From what I had understood, the main difference for the layman (that includes myself) was that the chirashi - as a variant of sushi uses vinegared rice while the kaisen don uses regular rice. Today, I found out that there was actually a kaisen chirashi don. Yes, this (#05-34/35 Ngee Ann City, 391 Orchard Road) was the same place as the one back in Far East Plaza with a waitress asking about a curry fish head order. They’ve expanded and this is the other newer outlet with a lot more seating space and staff.

The Sushi Bar, ankimo tofu uni ikura
ankimo tofu with uni and ikura

The menu had expanded with the same magnitude as the seating space. There was quite a lot of stuff and for a casual Japanese joint, it was kudos for effort. Their ankimo tofu was a surprising find and so was the nama yuba which honestly tasted quite nice. Then, their chirashi bowl which was a coalition of the usual suspects of sashimi/sushi - sake, mekajiki, maguro and hamachi....with some scallops. The quality of their seafood was decent if unexceptional and portions were quite generous to boot. I didn't dislike anything in particular, but there was something about it all that didn't quite make me feel that the food was truly satisfying. In fact, as I was finishing up, I thought that I wouldn't have minded at all topping up a few dollars more and dropping myself something that would have more than just the usual suspect variety at Kaiho Sushi over this.

The Sushi Bar, aburi chirashi
aburi-ed chirashi don

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