Sushi Hotaru

If you are a regular customer of Kinokuniya book store in Sydney you'd notice the brand new Sushi Hotaru on level two The Galleries Victoria around Town Hall station. That's how I found this new Sushi bar's 'opening soon' sign few weeks ago  on my way up to Kinokuniya and today I was the first customer on the queuing line at  11.30 when the staffs greeted us with their 'irrashaimase..'

They have a good variety of sushi with some kinda fusion nigiri sushi, all priced at $2.5 during the opening special and $3 for the side dishes.  The quality and the freshness are good and I'd be happy to comeback for a $2.5 nigiri sushi but if I compare with my favorite sushi in town, I'd definitely stick to my favorite Makoto's sushi. They have a good location inside the Galleries Victoria and the ambiance is ok, the service is good but not 'excellent' as I always expect from an authentic Japanese restaurant, or maybe I am just a fussy patron. 

(Tuna sushi)

(Grilled salmon sushi)

(Scallop sushi)

(Inari)

They also have a wide variety of side dishes on the menu but unfortunately most of them were not available, I was expecting to have agedashi tofu and deep fried salmon's skin but they didn't show up at all so I ended up trying the drum stick karage and mini okonomiyaki.

(Mini Okonomiyaki)

(Drum sticks karage)

(Green tea latte with red bean ice cream)

Fishermen's Soup

It's been one of those busy weeks at work and whenever I am flat out I'd tend to pamper myself with my favorite food. 

Makoto is one of my favorite Japanese eateries especially for sushi, they serve the best range of succulent sushi in town. Beside sushi I also love their Fishermen's Soup, a bountiful bowl of seafood in a clear yet rich soup comprises mussel, scampi, fish, and crab just so.... delicious!

(Fishermen's soup)

(Tuna sashimi)

 (Aburi salmon sushi)

(Sushi set from Makoto)

That's all I had for my lunch! Gochiso-sama deshta!.. :)

Swiss Maki

Another mochi product from Shu Shin Bou  Sydney, my favorite place in town for Japanese mochi.

It's more like an ice cream cake in a roll of smooth mochi with frozen mousse filling stuffed with seasonal fruit bits.

(Swiss maki)

iCookie

For Apple's mania, you may love this iCookie, it's an 'iPhone cookie' from Green Gables in Tokushima prefecture, Japan.

(picture courtesy of AFP, via Google news)

Green Gables in Tokushima prefecture pioneered the tasty treat in 2008 as a special birthday gift for customer's husband, said Kumiko Kudo, the 44 year-old owner. The biscuit gained nationwide fame after a photo of it made the rounds via Twitter posted by economic writer Kazuyo Katsuma and pop singer Komi Hirose. Since then Kudo has sold hundreds of the cookies.

The hand-made iCookie doesn't come cheap at 2,730 yen, and it's only available by order and inside Japan, where the waiting time to snap up one of the biscuits has been as long as two months.

(source: AFP via Google news)

Only in Japan..

Fruit Salad

There have been scorchingly hot days down here... if you live in Sydney you know what I'm grumbling about. Craving for something fresh to quench my thirst,  I made a simple fruit salad with yogurt. Nothing fancy, just some pieces of peach, rockmelon, pear and blueberry topped with blueberry yogurt (my favorite one) and roasted peanut.

(My fruit salad with yogurt)

Talking about fruit in Japan, there is a stereotype that fruits in Japan are luxuries with a premium melon could be priced over 10,000 yen, but that's not all the fact about the relatively expensive fruit in Japan, for some regular fruit like banana you'd find it reasonably priced.

The most famous fruit in Japan during summer? It's Suika (watermelon), there is a traditional summertime game called suika-wari (watermelon splitting game), it's often played on the beach with a blindfolded person tries to split a watermelon with blows from a wooden stick while others yell out instructions about where to strike.