After falling in love with tacos in Mexico, our taste tester tests the newest outside-the-box idea from Sushiro.

“Sushi tacos” sounds like something you’d only find far, far away from Japan. It’s the sort of thing you expect to find at a strange, independent fusion cafe run by a guy who’s never had the opportunity to eat authentic Japanese food, or that your semi-Japanophile college buddy would press together out of two half-eaten sets of leftovers since his palate isn’t fully adapted to Japanese flavors yet.

But as it turns out, you can get sushi tacos in Japan right now, and at one of the country’s largest kaitenzushi (conveyor belt sushi) chains, Sushiro.

▼ スシタコス = sushi tacos

We should point out that as a casual and very budget-friendly eatery, Sushiro isn’t all that concerned about adhering to orthodox sushi culinary traditions. Still, Sushiro is an extremely popular chain and not in the habit of offering menu items it doesn’t think people will want to eat, so if nothing else the company is confident in the concept of sushi tacos.

We needed to try them for ourselves, though, and our Japanese-language reporter P.K. Sanjun volunteered to do the taste testing. Why P.K.? Because he’s the biggest taco fan on our staff, having subsisted almost exclusively on them during his travels in Mexico and regularly making tacos at home since returning to Japan.

Sushiro’s sushi tacos are priced at 170 yen (US$1.60 each), and ordered via a touch panel at your seat, just like any other item on the Sushiro menu. As P.K. waited for his taco to arrive, he felt just a little apprehensive. After all, 170 yen could have also gotten him a piece of extra-fatty, extra-delicious chutoro maguro sushi.

After a short wait, P.K.’s sushi taco came down the line, and he grabbed the plate off of the conveyor. It’s a hard taco, with a crunchy tortilla shell, and inside you’ll find ground beef and pork, shredded lettuce, sliced onion, cheese, and vinegared sushi rice.

Looking at the ingredients, P.K. started to have a little more faith in the concept. A lot of the tacos he’d eaten in Mexico had rice in them. Sure, they hadn’t used vinegared sushi rice, but tangy flavors, like from citrus, show up in some Mexican cooking too. With his heart and mind now more at ease, he picked up his sushi taco and took a bite…and found that it was delicious!

The meat wasn’t fiery, but had a stimulating spice to it, and the vegetables were crisp, meshing pleasantly with the crunch of the taco shell. The sushi rice acted as a nice compliment to the other flavors, and so P.K. deems the sushi taco to be a completely viable choice when eating at Sushiro.

As with a lot of Sushiro’s more unique offerings, the sushi taco is currently on an unspecified limited-time status. In hindsight, it’s a little unusual that it doesn’t contain any seafood, given that fish tacos are a thing and Mexican ceviche is pretty close to sashimi, but for now P.K. is just happy to have one more way to eat tacos, thanks to the restaurant that also created the sushi hot dog.

Related: Sushiro location list
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