Saizen Sushi Bar
153 O’Connell Street
Adelaide South Australia 5000
T +61 8 8361 9561
OPEN Lunch Wednesday to Friday 12 noon till 2.30pm, Dinneray to Sunday 5.30pm till late.
FOOD So, I’m still looking for a second Japanese to match with Sumo Station Japanese Restaurant in the city. I’ve eaten all over the world in places that most Westerners wouldn’t set foot in, but in Adelaide windows so filthy that a thousand pugs might have slobbered against them turns me off completely. Across the road I can smell beautiful pizza and both Melt and The Pot are packed. Carlos (restaurant manager and sommelier of the Pot) is almost in South American tears describing their roast beef Sunday lunch. Bastard he makes the lack of review even more annoying because it is certain nothing will come close to that. Well, it is a glorious South Australian Autumn day blue skies mild breeze, being out side in the sunshine and by the ocean might not be Japanese but it does make sense. A park right on the edge of Henley Square, the ocean calm and exquisitely blue, people lying on the green (yes green) grass of the square, relaxed with fish and chips and ice creams, a steady stream of families promenading on the jetty it would seem almost perfect. Perfect that is until you get out of the car to be assailed with the smell of disgusting old fryer oil. Even fish and chips from the normally reliable Estia were vile, soggy cold chips and limp battered fish. Still it was Greek Easter and their normal take–away chef was clearly enjoying it and nowhere to be seen and the greedy menacing gulls enjoyed my $8 lunch much more than I did.
So it’s dark and by now I’m really desperate for a second small review. At the newish Greek on O’Connell street I stand at the door for about three minutes whilst five staff don’t notice and I wander down the street a couple of doors there is Saizen Sushi Bar and I am saved.
Given that just about every nearly restaurant on O’Connell Street is at least 50% full, this tiny sushi bar is empty. Not a smear on the windows, not even a thumb print around the door, their sushi train is slowly moving through the restaurant with reassuringly few items on display. Have you ever noticed in sushi bars that the little colour coded closhes are never clean and it was so blindingly obvious that every one was print free and sparkling and clearly washed between each use. At regular places along the bar are wasabi, pickled ginger, new chopsticks and serviettes. Good wasabi is feisty and expensive and rarely found in Adelaide’s Japanese restaurants. At Saizen it was chokingly fabulously hot, so go easy with the wasabi! Miso $2.20 was perfect and three different sushi prawn hand roll, octopus nigiri and whilst not on the train a personal favourite eel nigiri. Refrigerated sushi rice is an altered state it goes hard and nasty so it is extremely easy to pick good fresh sushi. It is soft and loose, each rice pearl separate but gently packed against each other in the roll the sushi at Saizen rates. Equally teriyaki eel comes in many grades. Bad eel is a bit like eating a rubber band and good eel, which theirs is, is soft moist and delicious. When there are so many mediocre offerings along O’Connell Street this simple inexpensive free food rates with us and they also do take–away.
