Sumo: Best Sushi Restaurant in Muscat

T-Mag Wednesday 31/August/2016 22:07 PM
By: Times News Service
Sumo: Best Sushi Restaurant in Muscat

Fried or dunked in a rich gravy, there may be no greater love, than the love of us who are from West Bengal, India, have for fish. Whether fried or soaked in a rich gravy, fish was almost all on my lunch menu while growing up. Mostly fresh water river fish showed up on our table, each time prepared in a different style of curry or stew, so ever present in my childhood memory as macher jhol. Little did I know then that fish could be equally succulent and tasty when served raw.

While recently the song ‘macher jhol’ has gone viral, my love for fish has taken a winding path over the years. See, for an Indian palate, no food is palatable, especially fish and meat, if it isn’t marinated in masalas and cooked well.

Hence when I began eating sushi a couple of years back, it was truly an acquired taste for me. I remember well sitting down for my first bit of sushi. I grimaced. “Ughhhh raw fish,” I quietly complained. But as I bit into the neat roll of sticky rice, avocado, and fresh tuna, which simply melted in my mouth, I immediately realised what I’d been missing out on.

There is more to this Japanese delicacy than just raw fish, as I’ve had the pleasure of discovering in the years since, and as a converted sushi lover, I was excited to find out that Sumo Sushi, a trendy franchise already popular in Dubai, was opening in Bareeq Al Shatti. I went to visit the newly opened Sumo Sushi, and after I was seated in a well lit corner, I began to wonder what dishes were about to come my way.

Puneet Katiyal, the friendly head chef at Sumo Sushi, appeared, presenting us with a Hawaiian Sushi Roll. “The Hawaiian Sushi Roll is minced tuna, avocado, and tobiko rolled together, topped with crispy sweet potato strips and drizzled with poke (fish) sauce,” he said in one breath. (If, while reading this you are now wearing a bewildered look, rest assured so was I.) Turns out most sushi rolls are topped with tiny orange, pearl-like orbs that are actually flying fish roe or eggs, which makes them caviar. They are called tobiko and they feature a mild, smokey-salty taste, and a crunchy texture. I eagerly bit into the roll. With rich, tuna, smokey tobiko, creamy avocado, and crispy sweet potato, it was a delightful burst of flavours and textures.

“There are three main types of sushi – maki, temaki, and nigiri,” Puneet said, explaining that maki is sushi that is wrapped in seaweed, temaki is the hand roll, and the nigiri is sushi made in the traditional way in which the sticky riceis first coated with wasabi sauce and then topped with raw fish. But no matter which sushi you roll, the most important element is perfect sticky rice. “The rice quality has to be good and it should be cooked to perfection. Also, the technique used to roll and cut is equally important, whether the stuffing is cucumber and avocado or tuna, salmon, and prawn.” Puneet disappeared, returning with a Samurai Roll, which turned out to be shrimp tempura and crabstick salad topped with avocado, cream cheese, and mayonnaise—a very avant-garde rice-less “roll”. This was quickly followed by the popular Dragon Roll, whose main ingredient is Unagi, a fresh water eel, which is wrapped along with crabstick in thin layers of avocado and topped with a blend of spicy mayonnaise and sweet teriyaki sauce. The delicate flavours of the cheese and avocado tantalised my taste buds, yet the fish remained the hero of these dishes. Rolling perfectly beautiful sushi that has well-balanced flavours and looks as tantalising as it tastes is no mean feat, and Katiyal proved himself a master of his craft. But when it comes to raw fish, as important as the chef’s skill is the quality of the ingredients.

“We are sticklers for freshness and here we ensure that all the ingredients that are used maintain that standard,” said Katiyal, when I asked him what made Sumo Sushi stand out from the rest. “During our research when menus were being finalised we realised that Muscat has a considerable number of vegetarians and hence we added quite a few options for vegetarians as well.”

If your perception up until now was that sushi is only for seafood lovers, then it’s time you tried the Forbidden Roll, a decadent sushi roll of avocado, cucumber, and asparagus rolled with black sushi rice and topped with a homemade kozo dressing. Or take an order of Kappa Maki, simple cucumber wrapped in sushi rice, and nori (edible seaweed).

Beyond rolls, Sumo Sushi also offers Japanese delicacies you’ll have a hard time finding elsewhere, from Japanese Curry Katsu, a breaded deep fried chicken cutlet (katsu) served with a coconut milk-based curry simmered with onion, garlic, ginger, curry powder, tomato paste, and Worcestershire sauce. They also offer a variety of bento boxes, like tempura bento, salmon teriyaki bento, BBQ beef bento, including interesting varieties like their sweet and spicy chilli prawn bento.

Other creations included fruit nigiri, a dessert sushi made of sweet rice and fruit toppings which was nice, but for a fish lover like me, it’s the fresh, creative seafood rolls that will keep me coming back. [email protected]

Dishes:
Japanese Curry Katsu: OMR 5
Chilli Prawn Bento Box: OMR6
Hawaiian Roll: OMR 5.400
Dragon Roll: OMR 5.500
Samurai Roll: OMR 5.400
Fruit Nigiri; OMR 2.100

Location:
Bareeq Al Shatti Mall
Call: + 968 2460 7050
sumosushibento.com