Sushizilla opened late last year in the new shopping mall that is Central Park. My colleague is somehow acquainted with the owner, and was singing praises about the fact that it is makes authentic Japanese food, that is, it’s not some Korean or Chinese interpretation of sushi.
The Sushizilla located in the food court is quintessentially a sushi train restaurant, but it does have a smaller kiosk that sells takeaway sushi rolls three floors down. Usually, all non-white plates on the sushi train are $3.00. There was an opening special where the non-white plates were $2.00, but I didn’t manage to make it to the sushi train until just last week when N and I went to satisfy a sushi craving and it was the closest restaurant. I was quite pleased when I’d tried the takeaway kiosk multiple times before.
So, we started with the standard tuna and salmon because we rarely eat sushi at a restaurant and not have some tuna or salmon.
Fish prepared raw is about the only preparation of fish, other than teriyaki salmon, that I like. Aren’t the ribbons of colour pretty?
And then we decided to expand our palate with some sort of white fish (I am terrible with telling types of fish apart). I have no idea what the dot of red is on the left sushi – we thought it might have been umeboshi (pickled plums) before we ate it, but we couldn’t taste it.
We also had some sort of marinated sort of fish that N thought was mackerel, but turned out to be rather squeaky, and salty and vinegary at the same time.
I decided that I wanted octopus sushi as it’d been a long time since I’d had it. Except squid sushi comes around first, which we’d never encountered before, let alone with legs in tact. Now, I can tell you that I am not a fan of raw squid! It’s slimy (but not as slimy as raw scallop) and leaves a bad aftertaste in your mouth.
Eventually the octopus sushi does come around, though. And it’s cooked, which is a win after having raw squid.
And we end with a avocado and salmon roll…
and some sashimi.
The variety of cuisines on offer in Central Park is vast – there’s Malaysian, Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese (yakitori and sushi), Indian, Turkish, Brazilian to name a few. But Japanese will always win when I’m asked to choose. So I ended up at Sushizilla Sushi Train again with N for lunch. Except this time, we decided to order some of the dishes that weren’t just going around the train:
We went back a week later and they had crab croquette circulating. The crab croquette tastes far more satisfying when eaten fresh, so that it’s so hot that it burns your mouth, rather than lukewarm.
We also ordered cucumber hosomaki (or kappamaki), which is eaten between dishes of raw fish as a palate cleanser. But I just like them generally.
And salmon hosomaki. They’re both super simple dishes, but ones that I’ve always liked. The wasabi was particularly potent.
This is the prawn nigiri. The prawn nigiri was pretty standard, although this was the first time we’d seen it circulate.
And this is the bonito tataki, which is really fishy. We saw the bonito tataki on the menu, thought it was something weird but looked safe enough to try, and so ordered it. It’s lightly seared. It’s a rather ‘meaty’ textured fish, but with a very strong ‘fish’ flavour to it – so it’s something like fishy beef? I’m not a fan of ginger and so scraped it off the top, but that probably would’ve gone a long way to cutting the fishy taste. As for the random white fish nigiri, apart from being really fishy, it had a slightly squeaky texture to it.
And then there were a few that we’d seen circulating but didn’t feel game enough to try previously –
And what is that strange thing? It’s shark fin and jelly fish onigiri. The shark fin and jelly fish don’t have a distinct taste, so it was just a salty, crunchy and crispy nigiri.
Finally, crab meat nigiri. I’d gotten my hopes up thinking it might be actual actual meat. Alas, I was disappointed because it was a a deconstructed crabstick. Boo.
Some of the sushi was challenging, but Sushizilla definitely satisfied my craving for sushi.
Sushizilla is located at Central Park, Level 2 Shop 204, 28 Broadway, Chippendale NSW 2008.