Anyone who knows me, knows that I love food. I love to explore different restaurants, try different foods and just generally enjoy the good feelings that food and friends bring me. Sushi is one of my favorites and I could eat it almost all the time. To me, sushi is like edible art. I love that it’s fresh, healthy and most of all the fantastic designs and presentations that come along with it.
My friend and I have taken it upon ourselves to have regular sushi outings and explore all the local sushi bars. Because I love seeing how each place presents their sushi, I figured why not document?
Today’s post is featuring Sushi King which is a chain in Albuquerque. Now I’m generally not an anti-chain person, but I do like to avoid them when it comes to certain foods. Sushi is one of them and I feel in my personal experience that because sushi is an art and because it seems to take more care to make, that smaller more local restaurants often make it better. They seem more appreciative of the business they are getting and they really take the time and care to make it. Encountering sushi that doesn’t taste fresh can turn a person off the stuff forever and then people miss out on such a delicious, wonderful food.
People have a misconception about what sushi is and what it tastes like, they don’t like the taste of cooked fish and they think that raw fish will have a “fishy” taste. Personally, I don’t think that raw fish tastes “fishy” the way that cooked fish does, but that’s not say that other people don’t taste it. Many people who don’t like fish hear the word sushi, think raw fish and then shut their mind down. Sushi is actually about the rice, it’s a cooked vinegar rice combined with other ingredients, not necessarily fish. So you can have a veggie roll with no fish what-so-ever and that will still be considered sushi.
I like to compare sushi to wine. It’s an acquired taste and as you begin eating sushi or drinking wine, you start with very simple, easy flavors and as your palate begins to mature you graduate to more complex flavors. Sushi is also about texture and so you may just not be able to get past certain flavors and textures but don’t let a certain texture turn you off from sushi all together. Personally, I can’t eat Boston Rolls or Philadelphia rolls which usually comes filled with cream cheese. To me, cream cheese is reserved for bagels and cheesecake. I can’t get past the consistency or taste of cream cheese in a roll but many people love the cream cheese in their rolls.
We started off with Edamame which is just steamed soy beans that are salted. It’s super delicious and very healthy. Our first set of rolls were White Fish Roll (left) and a Spider roll (right). The White Fish Roll consists of white fish, rice and veggies and the Spider Roll is avocado, soft shell crab, gobo and smelt eggs. The White Fish Roll was fresh and made really well, but it can sometimes taste a bit a bland so I like to mix some wasabi and soy sauce to dip the roll in. It just helps to give it a bit of bite and extra flavor.
I thought the Spider Roll was delicious. You could probably put avocado on anything and I’d be happy to eat it. Again, sushi is a lot about texture. Many people don’t like the feeling of the eggs on the tongue as they tend to pop and feel a bit gritty. It’s easy to scrape off if you can’t deal with the texture, but I love it.
Our next round of rolls is a simple Spicy Tuna (right). It consists of tuna, tobikko (the little orange balls on top), some veggies and a spicy sauce. It’s a basic roll but so delicious. On the left is a California Roll which is very basic and one of the most common rolls one will see when having sushi. It’s just a mix of crab and veggies. If you’re new to sushi, a California Roll is an excellent starting point to get your feet wet.
This is the roll I was most excited to write about. First of all, it’s called a Slytherin Roll and anything that makes a reference to Harry Potter is absolutely fantastic! This roll consists of spicy salmon, cucumber and avocado on the inside and topped with unagi (freshwater eel), avocado and flying fish eggs. The small red spot is actually Sriracha sauce. The Sriracha made the roll a touch spicy so I ended up wiping it off. But overall this particular roll was so delicious and was my favorite of the evening.
Overall, Sushi King is a good place to eat. The place is clean and the service is quick and friendly. The food is definitely fresh and it comes out so fast and prepared in such a beautiful fashion.
