Sushi

Sushi Zanmai.

Two freakin' days in a row.

Geez!

Yesterday we celebrated mum's birthday (in the Chinese calendar) at Sushi Zanmai 1-Utama. She didn't want a cake, even though we always buy super nice cakes for her, like this and this. 0_0 Apparently she visited the temple and she was instructed to have vermicelli and a red egg on her Chinese-calendar-birthday to supposedly ensure longevity. Superstition or tradition? You tell me.

Completed the IMC 5% quiz today and i passed with super flying colours! I took the quiz in the library with a whole troupe of IMC students, some of which i don't even know. The quiz has mostly repetitive questions, which are best attempted with a group of people so that answers are memorized. :) It was rather amusing, to think of it. Whole crowd of students surrounding a PC, shouting out answers. The din eventually got out of control and the librarian came over sporting his poker face to shut us up.

Scored a full 5%. Fantastic. So after that i was feeling ravenous to the point of passing out so i joined Joseph and Azu for lunch at Sunway Pyramid. Despite my vehement protests and feeble suggestions of other random restaurants, we ended up at none other than Sushi Zanmai.

Have taken photos for both days but am posting them up together.

Let's start off with Mum's bean curd. Along with it came this wire-mesh-spatula which resembles a fly swatter. I have no idea what it is for. To scoop out the spring onion? Unless you want to play with a miniature fly swatter, don't order this. Its texture is somewhat rough and you shouldn't settle for any white tofu that isn't silky smooth!

The inescapable soft-shelled crab temaki. Crab was as usual, divine. Rest of the temaki? Not quite so. They weren't up to the standard that i blogged about during my first visit here. It's mainly because of the limp seaweed used. Limp seaweed = big no no! Pah. Regardless, soft-shelled crab temaki rocks, even when it is wrapped with limp seaweed.

Deep fried soft-shelled crab. Limp seaweeds be gone! Crabs were wonderfully crunchy, and slightly powdery from the batter. Served with a strange-tasting dipping sauce with a sour tang to it.

Next up, Thur's sukiyaki. Sucky yucky, i call it. Sis will totally agree. Nothing turns me off more than the sight of a whole pot of vegetables. Sigh.

At least it comes with slices of sheet thin beef and a raw egg.

If you're a person who adores soups heavily laced with the earthy flavours of a vegetable garden, the sukiyaki is the thing for you. Mum was raving about it, about how clear the soup was and how heavenly and aromatic it was. Bah. I guess one man's sukiyaki can be another's sucky yucky.

More raw stuff. Sashimi. Salmon and octopus.

Oh my. Don't they look succulent? The salmon was fresh as ever so i wasn't disappointed.

Tako. Sandwiching lemon wedges. I didn't get to sample the octopus as they were snapped up so quickly that when i turned around they were gone. 0_0 They were sorta glistening, which means that they're incredibly fresh as well?

Skewered teriyaki scallops. These tasted lovely. Mm hmm. I wouldn't say that the scallops were juicy as, in my gluttonous hurry to swallow them, i forgot to actually notice. XD Teriyaki sauce was marvellous. Super strong. Slightly sweet. I like!

Grilled beef wrapped around enoki mushrooms. It is drenched in this murky murky sauce which tastes really... weird. It has this strange taste that i couldn't place. In any case, I wouldn't recommend this dish. Sis insists, over and over again, that the grilled beef enoki mushroom combo in Dave's is much much better so i'll give it a try next time.

Salmon fish head. Mum's. She is damn obsessed with fish heads. Salmon heads are overwhelmingly fishy, man! I could still detect a whiff of it even after it was grilled. Mum enjoyed it very much, so ... That's that.

Beef udon noobles. I like udon. Fat and bouncy udon! :) Served with beef slices, extra wakame and some sort of little wild mushroom caps.

Thur's garlic rice. Nothing too special about it. 6 bucks for garlic rice... Geez... -_-"

Finally. The dessert. Green tea parfait consisting of: green tea ice cream, fresh cream, corn flakes, red bean paste and layer of green tea jelly. Scoop of green tea was fantastic. Strong aroma of green tea. Combine it with the corn flakes and... sigh... divine divine.

Whipped cream used was heavenly. Melty cream, sprinkled with some sort of green-tea-esque particles. Super fresh. They don't use those lousy cheaplak stale whipped cream that resembles hair mousse (those that remain solid, poke it and the entire blob of whipped cream comes falling off).

And that's the first two layers. The red bean paste complimented the parfait perfectly. A tad sweet, but since the corn flakes are pretty much tasteless, everything balances out and reaches equilibrium with a movement along the supply curve.

Strangely enough, the red bean paste tastes like 小羊羹. I have absolutely no idea what 小羊羹 is in english or japanese but they're some Japanese jellied squares of red bean paste that Mum used to buy for us when we were young.The last layer was the green tea jelly which had a slight bitter green tea tinge to it.

Thumbs up for the green tea parfait.

Am saving my two thumbs up for their strawberry parfait which is, according to sis, even better than the green tea one. Super siao case orgasmic. Most unfortunately they were all sold out yesterday so i have to parfait another day.

More pictures at Sushi Zanmai's Sunway Pyramid branch. The dishes above, except the orange-roe sushi, were all ordered by Azu and he was generous enough and let me and Mojo grab a temaki each. ;) 5 temaki combo, soft-shelled crab and sushi.

I didn't snap much pictures on my second visit as i had only sushi and they weren't really interesting. Despite being freakishly hungry, i was full after cramming myself with five plates of sushi. I bet it was due to the fact that i was having a cold that i lost a little bit of appetite. 5 plates of sushi can never satisfy my normal appetite.

Mojo's tempura rice. Looks a complete mess in this pic, but it looks fine in real life.

Argh! I can't resist. Soft-shelled crab temaki. :) I have to post it up once more.

Off to snooze now. Have day off tomorrow so i don't have to slave all the way to uni.