And he investigates crazily, of course.
If we’re being totally honest, “hungry” and “too lazy to cook or go pick something up” aren’t infrequent descriptions of our mood by the middle of the day, so there’s a pretty steady stream of food deliveries that come to the SoraNews24 offices in downtown Tokyo. Luckily for us, delivery has always been a pretty big thing with restaurants in Japan, and the number of eateries offering such services has only gone up during the pandemic.
Being spoiled for choice means it’s sometimes hard to choose which restaurant to order from, though. For example, food delivery service Demaekan lists eight different sushi restaurants that it can deliver to our office from. We suppose we could order a different one each work day, and then pick our favorite at the end of the week and a half, except that we’re not all that confident in our mid-term memory, especially as we overload our brain with endorphins from so many consecutive days of sushi lunches.
As is so often the case, our ace reporter Mr. Sato had a solution that a more restrained individual wouldn’t have come up with: order the cheapest one-person sushi set from all eight of the restaurants, and have them all delivered on the same day for a direct comparison.
▼ Eight sushi sets scheduled for delivery within 21 minutes of each other is possibly the most beautiful screen grab we’ve ever taken.
One by one, the sushi sets began covering our table, eventually resulting in this glorious scenery.
Specifically, we ordered each restaurant’s lowest-priced one-person nigiri sushi (the standard “seafood on a block of rice”-style) that was offered for delivery. There were a few lower-priced sushi roll sets, but nigiri is really the pinnacle of the sushi culinary art form (though some of the sets do include some rolls and gunkan-style sushi).
So what did we get?
● Sushi Choshimaru’s Hibiki (1,320 yen [US$10.65] plus 420-yen delivery fee)
Salmon, seared salmon, marinated salmon, egg, ikura (salmon roe), salmon rolls
● Sushiro’s One-person Sushiro Set (1,170 yen, 420—yen delivery fee)
Tuna, hamachi (yellowtail), anago (saltwater eel), scallop, squid, seared fatty salmon, egg, fatty albacore tuna, negi maguro (minced tuna with green onion), and ikura
● Gin no Sara’s Takumi (1,598 yen, free delivery)
Negitoro hand roll, tuna, squid, sea bream, salmon, aji (jack mackerel), anago, shrimp, tsubugai (whelk), salmon and ikura gunkan, egg
● Sushi Zanmai’s One-Person Yuki (2,800 yen, 310—yen delivery fee)
Chutoro (fatty tuna), tuna, egg, salmon, squid, shrimp, buri (mature yellowtail), anago, sea bream, ikura, tekkamaki (tuna rolls)
● Itamae Sushi’s Senbatsu Nigiri (2,480 yen, 310—yen delivery fee)
Egg, negitoro rolls, seared mackerel, squid with sea urchin, green onion sprouts, anago, chutoro, whitefish, raw shrimp, boiled salmon
● Sushi Uogashi Nihonichi’s One-Person Nami Nigiri (1,680 yen, 310—yen delivery fee)
Tuna, whitefish, salmon, squid, shrimp, albacore tuna, raw squid tentacles, hikarimono (blue-backed fish), anago, negitoro, egg
● Kakiya Sushi’s Nagoyaka Morikomi (1,850 yen, free delivery)
Chutoro, ikura, seared bonito, sea bream, salmon, negitoro, raw shrimp, tuna, squid, scallop
● Sushizamurai’s Takeda (1,680 yen, 300-yen delivery fee)
Tuna, squid, salmon, sea bream, ark shell, shrimp, aji, shrimp, mixed sushi rolls
Rather than pass judgement himself, though, Mr. Sato decided to recruit the help of his fellow SoraNews24 reporters P.K. Sanjun and Seiji Nakazawa, the two biggest sushi fans in the office.
▼ P.K. and Seiji, solemnly undertaking the difficult assignment of eating lots and lots of sushi
In making their pick for the best of the bunch, they paid particular attention to the following points:
● Does the set have hikarimono? Hikarimono refers to silver-skinned or “blue-backed” fish such as saba, sanma, and aji (all kinds of mackerel) or iwashi. Though they tend to have a “fishier” taste than other kinds of sushi, hikarimono are considered quite desirable by old-school sushi connoisseurs.
● Is the set’s shrimp raw or boiled? Since shrimp needs to be especially fresh in order to be served raw, the former is more desirable.
● How big are the ikura? The bigger the better.
● How does the negitoro taste?
When the dust settled and the chopsticks were set down, P.K. and Seiji picked the Takumi, from Gin no Sara, as the champion. It got points for including hikarimono in the form of aji, the negatoro roll was great too (even its nori seaweed was tasty). Seiji also gave an honorable mention to Kakiya Sushi for its gigantic ikura, saying “I’d be happy making an entire meal out of them.”
Armed with this advice, Mr. Sato can now make his sushi delivery orders with confidence. But what about those rare times when he’s craving something other than sushi? We can already hear the gears whirring in his head as he plots another massive comparison spread, but for right now we’ve still got a lot of sushi digesting to do.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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