We summon the Devil’s “sushi roll” in Tokyo because we need to eat this 6,000-calorie thing

http://bit.ly/2CMoDcU Casey Baseel

Dark forces can’t intimidate us, or our stomachs.

Have you ever had the feeling that a piece of visual art is speaking directly to you? Maybe it’s a painting of an exotic landscape that makes you want to travel to far-off lands, or an abstract sculpture that perfectly expresses an emotion you’ve often felt but never been quite able to put into words.

We had a moment like that this week, when we saw a photo of a new menu item at Japanese restaurant chain Amataro, and what the picture was saying to us was clear. It was saying “Hey, SoraNews24, come eat this 6,000-calorie sushi roll!”

It’s almost time for the Japanese holiday called Setsubun, and while the festivities include such myriad components as ogres and chucking soybeans, our personal favorite is the eating of ehomaki, deluxe sushi rolls that are supposed to bless you with nebulous prosperity and instant deliciousness. But while most ehomaki are content to land somewhere on the scale of decadence between fancy and ostentatious, Amataro’s Akuma no Ehomaki, or Devil’s Ehomaki, is downright insane.

First, there’s nori seaweed and garlic rice wrapped around a core of three pork filet cutlets. This is topped with an oblong thin-crust pizza, sausage, yakiniku-style beef short rib meat, and mayonnaise. There are even scrambled eggs mixed in, almost as if Amataro knows you might be too full to eat breakfast the next morning.

▼ Seriously. At 6,000 calories, the Devil’s Ehomaki has three times the recommended daily intake for an adult man in Japan.

▼ The lack of vinegared rice means that the Devil’s Ehomaki is the only ehomaki we’ve encountered that doesn’t technically count as sushi, but it’s too late to turn back now.

Summoning the Devil’s Ehomaki were our reporters Mr. Sato (chief of SoraNews24’s Bad Idea Department), Ahiruno Neko, Harada, and our boss, Yoshio. As the server set the 50-centimeter (19.7-inch), 1.5-kilogram (3.3-pound) roll down on the table, he informed us that for Setsubun this year, we should eat our ehomaki while facing east by northeast, which is this year’s lucky direction.

However, this thing is way too big to just pick it up and start going to town on it, so we had to set it back down again…

▼ THUD!

…and cut it into more manageable portions, not using a knife, but a pair of kitchen shears.

Oh, and if you think the Devil’s Ehomaki looks freaky normally, examining it in cross-section really hammers home how it’s actually several meals in one.

With the devil now divided into four pieces, our heroes felt confident enough to attempt to vanquish it…

…and their gallant gluttony proved great enough to carry the day!

▼ They even had space left over for a round of victory beers.

Best of all, the Devil’s Ehomaki, which they had assumed existed only to mercilessly slap them in the face/stomach with calories, is incredibly tasty, which kind of makes sense when you consider that it’s a Voltron-like combination of several individually delicious foods. And since Amataro is an izakaya (Japanese pub), where you’re supposed to order food to share with friends, maybe it’s not as crazy to eat as it is to look at, especially when you can cut up the 3,990-yen (US$36) cost four ways.

Still, if your dinner plans include a dance with the Devil’s Ehomaki (which is available until February 4), we’d recommend a light lunch beforehand, and no dancing at all for at least 30 minutes afterwards.

Related: Amataro location list (Devil’s Ehomaki available at branches in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, Osaka, and Hyogo Prefectures [excluding Yokohama Nishiguchi branch])
Photos ©SoraNews24