Sushi on the Move

One of the things I like to do when I travel, is to experience the local interpretations of what we are used to at home. I find it fascinating how different communities of any particular diaspora will reinterpret their homeland dishes to fit indigenous ingredients and local tastes. Pizza would be a good example with New York vs. Chicago vs. Rome vs. Milan, etc. Each one of these places and their communities (and the hundreds of others) have adopted their own style to the basic concept and with it, created valid variations that adds to the overall culinary landscape. Chinese food is another example... ever wonder where and how 'Egg Foo Young' originated, and how it is on the menu of all "Chinese Canadian" eateries? Food for thought. 

So while in Hong Kong, Helen and I wanted to sample a Vancouver staple: sushi. Would it be as good as at home? Will it be as innovative? Will it be as "authentic"?

 

Yes, yes, and yes.

We ended up at Sen Ryo, a franchise under the Genkei Sushi banner. I insisted on conveyor belt sushi as I have always liked the idea of picking your own sushi off a moving product line. You only take what looks good, as opposed to possibly having to deal with what's been served to you.

For starters, you make your own green tea at your own table! How cool is that?! Each booth is equipped with a hot water spout. You adjust your own tea powder and then serve yourself with hot water. This was super convenient as we did not need to wait for a server to fill up a tea pot.

On to the sushi. It was excellent! The salmon was of the farmed variety. As unpopular as it may be, I admit I prefer the farmed version over the wild. There is just more flavour in the overfed, lazy-good-for-nothing farmed salmon than their wild, active, motivated-to-spawn-more-salmon-babies counterparts. And, it was a flavour explosion! The salmon was so full of the white, Omega-3 fatty goodness, it was like salmon toro.

Then Tiffany introduced us to burdock.

Burdock? What's that? -Essentially, it looks like a wooden stick cut into 2 to 3 inch pieces. Our first taste of it was in pickled form. It was slightly earthy, but was balanced by the pickling spices. They tasted better than it looked. Then came the burdock chips... wow! These things are amazing. They taste like a less intense potato, but all of the crispiness (and seasoning) that makes anyone love chips in general. Who knew wood could taste so good? (Insert dirty joke here).