Revolving sushi certainly does get around.
Our reporter Ikuna Kamezawa has been traveling the world and checking out how certain food from Japan are done in different cultures and climates. One of the foods most near and dear to her heart is sushi, and while sushi restaurants can be found all over the globe the conveyor belt sushi known as kaitenzushi is much rarer outside of Japan.
So Ikuna was quite surprised to find that there was one such restaurant in the capital city of the Czech Republic, Prague. She was really enjoying the city itself because of its historic feel without all the crowds of places like Paris or Vienna, but a revolving sushi restaurant was just the icing on the cake.
Ikuna headed over to the large shopping center in the suburbs of Prague where Makakiko Running Sushi was located. She wasn’t really sure what the name was supposed to mean but it had a classier atmosphere than the fast-food feel of revolving sushi places back home.
The lane was covered by windows that diners can open to retrieve the food the want. Also, following the very sensible logic of “Why have one when you can have two?” there were two lanes vertically arranged for even more selection at a single glance. This style is unheard of in Japan, but an idea worth adopting, Ikuna felt.
Speaking of selection, Makakiko Running Sushi went well beyond just sushi on its belts. Ikuna saw a lot of Chinese foods like stir-fry and gyoza. There were also some plates with kimchi and even miso soup was riding the conveyor – another thing you would never see in Japan for obvious accident-prevention reasons.
She decided to get a base reading with the global standard of salmon sushi.
Just as she suspected, it was the kind of sushi where you could barely taste the vinegar in the rice. She encounters this a lot in sushi outside of Japan and wondered why that is. Surely, people anywhere would like the sweet flavorfulness of the vinegar.
Regardless, the sushi was still good, if not a little on the bland side, and the fish was surprisingly fresh tasting for a landlocked country. The miso soup was very good too.
Ikuna also tried some inarizushi that wasn’t quite right but still good, when suddenly a waiter came and took her dishes away. This startled her quite a bit because in Japan the bill is usually calculated by the number of empty dishes left on the table.
Makakiko Running Sushi, however, has an all-you-can-eat system with a flat rate of 418 koruna (2,650 yen / $19) for lunch and 488 koruna (3,085 yen / $22) for dinner. Our reporter wasn’t sure if that was expensive of not, mainly because the menu was so different.
Which brings us to these things…
Ikuan had no idea what the wrinkly pink things were but she was fascinated by them as they floated by on the conveyor belt. There was a lot of it, so it must have been a popular item, but when she tried it, the chewy texture of these fruit-like things didn’t really do it for her.
The other curious item on the belt was something completely wrapped in tin foil. After eating the pink things, she was hesitant to roll the dice again but plucked one anyway.
Inside was a steamed sweet potato!
It was far more moist than the kind eaten in Japan and reminded her of the traditional Japanese confection called yokan.
It was definitely a winner, but if Ikuna had to choose a top three at Makakiko it would be the following:
▼ Grilled whole shrimp
▼ These things that look like chili shrimp
▼ Skewered shrimp
Before you go thinking Ikuna is some kind of shrimp-loving maniac, she simply chose those three dishes because they had the most reliable taste. With all the unexpected items traveling across her table, she could always count on the shrimp tasting like shrimp.
▼ The roast beef also gets an honorable mention.
In the end, Makakiko Running Sushi was more like a conveyor belt Asian buffet than a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, but there’s nothing wrong with that. She would definitely come back here on her next visit to the country, just without the pink things.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]