We head to the popular revolving sushi chain, and something very attention-grabbing heads to our table.
Kura Sushi is a sushi restaurant. It’s right there in the name. It’s not just a sushi restaurant, though, it’s a revolving sushi restaurant…and actually it’s not just a revolving sushi restaurant either, since you can order things other than sushi to have delivered to your table by conveyor belt, such as noodles, tempura, fried chicken, and French fries.
Now Kura Sushi is broadening its horizons even farther from its signature foodstuff, as it’s offering whole cakes.
Part of Kura Sushi’s new “Present System” that launched last month, the Seasonal Fruit Cake is a personal sponge cake topped with whipped cream and sliced fruits, which will supposedly change throughout the year to match up with whatever’s currently tasty. Priced at 1,000 yen (US$6.45), it’s a bit of a luxury as far as revolving sushi restaurant desserts go, but one that still piqued our interest, due in no small part to what we’d heard is a very festive delivery method and presentation.
We sent our Japanese-language reporter Seiji Nakazawa over to try the Kura Sushi Seasonal Fruit Cake experience for himself, and after tapping over to the Present System tab of the menu on our order panel and selecting the Seasonal Fruit Cake, he was given a choice between two messages to attach to our order: “Congratulations!” (おめでとう！) or “Thank you!” (ありがとう！).
▼ He opted for the former, since he was in a self-congratulatory mood.
After finalizing his order, Seiji sat back and waited, absently watching various plates of sushi slide by.
Seiji was sitting at a table with a walkway next to it, and more booths on the other side. The conveyor belt was arranged in way that when plates came out from the kitchen, they’d first flow past the tables across the aisle, then the route would wrap back around and come by where Seiji was sitting.
In other words, Seiji could see what was coming around on the belt well before it actually got to him. That’s not such an unusual situation at larger revolving sushi restaurants, but was unique about this visit was that Seiji could hear what was coming too.
At first he thought his eyes and ears might be playing tricks on him, as he noticed twinkling lights and cheerfully chirping music farther up the conveyor course. But once they got up to the table directly across from Seiji, there was no mistaking it.
This was his cake order accompanied by its own procession of fanciful decorations covered in blinking lights and a soundtrack that created the effect of a scaled-down version of Disneyland’s Electrical Parade.
And there was no mistaking that this was Seiji’s cake specifically, since part of the parade was a video monitor saying “Table 47’s order,” corresponding to Seiji’s seat.
Looking down the lane on his side of the aisle, soon Seiji could see the blinking lights…
…and then it was here!
“Omedetou!” (“Congratulations!”) said a cheerful voice from the monitor’s speaker, with Seiji’s selected message also displayed on the screen. Suddenly, though, the displayed text changed to “Attention please!” (注目！)…
…and the lid on the plate popped open, revealing Seiji’s cake!
▼ The sights and sounds of the Kura Sushi Seasonal Fruit Cake delivery!
With the dessert before him, Seiji could see that it is indeed a whole cake, in the sense that it’s not a slice cut off from a larger baked good. However, it’s not a massive confectionary that would feed a whole birthday’s party worth of people. Really, it’s a cake designed to be eaten by one person, or maybe shared by two people who get along well enough to not fight over the last bite, as the diameter of the cake is roughly the same as a standard-size Kura Sushi plate.
That said, it’s still a lovely looking dessert, created and plated with care, and it’s got quite a lot of fruit on it, creating a nice visual impact.
And it tastes great too! Seiji feels though, that even though it’s called the Seasonal Fruit Cake, it’s really the whipped cream that’s the star of the show here. Made with sweetened condensed milk sourced from Japan’s dairy region of Hokkaido, it’s milky and delicious. Considering how Kura Sushi is so detail-oriented about the quality of their sushi’s supporting-role ingredients like wasabi and ginger, in hindsight Seiji feels like he should have expected them to have high standards for their whipped cream too.
At 1,000 yen, it’s arguably a little on the expensive side, but considering how good it looks and tastes, Seiji didn’t feel like he got a bad deal, and there’s even a half-off promotion coming up on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when the cake can be had for just 500 yen, which is a very attractive bargain. However, aside from flavor and finances, there’s one other thing to take into account here, which is…
…it’s a little embarrassing.
Between the flashing lights and the music, pretty much all the other customers in the area are going to notice when the Seasonal Fruit Cake in coming down the conveyor. If you don’t mind being the center of attention for a few moments, you’ll be fine. On the other hand, if you’re prone to self-consciousness, you’ll need to be mentally prepared to give the other diners a bit of a show, sort of like a miniature motorized version of servers at a restaurant in America singing happy birthday to you.
As a full-grown adult dude dining by himself, Seiji couldn’t help but feel some awkwardness, but that’s something that’s probably largely alleviated if you’re eating with a group of friends or your kids. And again, the cake did taste really good, so he’s happy to once again sing the praises of Kura Sushi.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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