Sushi-Go-Round

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Sushi-Go-Round

Within Chatan Town there is a section called Mihama, and located inside Mihama is American Village. American Village offers a few shops and restaurants that are like those in the United States but also has several stores featuring Japanese culture and cusinine. This evening a friend and I decided to avoid the Americanized places and check out a sushi-go-round.

At kaiten-zushi (conveyor-belt sushi or sushi-go-round) restaurants, small plates of sushi move past customers’ tables on a conveyor belt, and customers take the ones they want to eat. At a kaiten-zushi restaurant, each plate usually ranges from about ¥100 (less than $1) to ¥500 (about $4), while in a traditional sushi restaurant you must spend at least ¥1,000 ($8) just for a set menu and much more if you order a la carte. Sushi-go-rounds are also great fun for kids, so they're a popular option for families eating out. The first revolving sushi restaurant opened in Osaka in 1958. Now such eateries are becoming familiar around the world.

When you sit down at your table, the first thing to do is pour some tea into your cup and pour a little soy sauce onto the small saucer (for dipping the sushi). The plates going around usually have different patterns depending on the price of the sushi they carry. The bill is calculated at the end by counting the plates stacked up on each table. Recently at some of these restaurants sushi can be ordered using a touch-screen panel. As well as classic sushi dishes like raw tuna and salmon, many sushi-go-round outlets offer innovative dishes with fish that is grilled or topped with onion and mayonnaise. Some places also offer plates with non-sushi treats like fried chicken, tempura, sashimi, cut fruit, and even slices of cake.

The following dishes were the ones that I ate: hamburg sushi, grilled squid sushi, fried mushroom sushi, egg/avacado/salmon sushi, squid and herring egg sushi, squid sushi. The only dish that I didn't care for was the squid and herring egg sushi. The taste was fine but I didn't care for the texture. It was good having Robin along as it allowed me to try lots of different dishes plus she pulled things off the conveyer belt that I would have never tried otherwise. At the end of our meal the waitress came over and scanned our plates with a little device that read some kind of computer chip in each plate denoting how much the dishes cost. We were handed a little plastic card to take up to the cashier to pay for our meal. It was so cool! I'd never seen anything like it before.

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Photos

Inside Restaurant
This chef made all the sushi right in front of us and then put it on the conveyer belt

Comments

[Erin]

Yummy Sushi
Kim, This sushi looks great! Cool idea with the scanners, too! Love, Erin