Back with a vengeance…

The last time we were here was before or in early November last year, so long ago. Well, last Saturday afternoon, my girl went out with her mum and she said she wanted to go and eat sushi. They went to the outlet of one of the Japanese food franchises in town but it was full so they had to abandon the plan and went next door for something else.

When I heard that, I decided to take things into my own hands and announced that we would go for sushi for lunch the following day, Sunday and finally, we went back to that place again after way over half a year! They were very particular about the SOP and where you sit but the place was so very crowded – I would much sooner go some place else but no, we wanted sushi so sushi we would have!

There we were, the three of us, back with a vengeance and knowing that we would not be going out all that much these days and might not be coming back again for some time, I took a whole lot from the carousel for us to enjoy.

This…

Sushi 1

…was nice so I took two plates of that – actually, the shade of the egg was different…

Sushi 2

– probably one was a little overdone and I thought they were different.

These were good too…

Sushi 3

…and we had two plates of those and I liked this one…

Sushi 4

…as well.

My girl did not want any with raw salmon after all the bad press the fish has been getting lately so we did not have any and had unagi

Sushi 5

…instead. The blue plate is more expensive. RM3.70 while the red ones are RM2.80 each.

My missus loves those inari ones in the tofu pouches and she had this…

Sushi 6

…and also this…

Sushi 7

For one thing, I seemed to notice that there wasn’t that much variety to choose from that day unlike on our previous visits. If it was because of COVID-19, that was no excuse at all for them to cut down on the types of sushi made available – the place was crowded, almost full and if there are any plates left on the carousel, those would be the cheap, unimpressive ones that most people would not cast a second glance at.

I had the Shiro ramen (RM12.80)…

Shiro ramen

Everything was drowned in the soup, completely submerged, so I had to meticulously bring the onsen egg, the fried chicken cutlets and the noodles to the surface to take a photograph of it and no, I did not enjoy it much. The broth was way too thick and rich, rather strong on the taste of garlic AND sesame oil. I am no fan of the latter, that’s for sure…plus it did not have any seaweed by the side – I was positive I saw that in the photograph in their menu. It reminded me of this one which I did not enjoy all that much either. All in all, I would just say it was edible, not anything I would want to order again and no, I did not lick the bowl clean – what I would do when something is really so very nice, not at all!

I ordered this kabocha korokke (RM6.80)…

kabocha korokke

– their pumpkin croquettes and yes, they were very nice. Perhaps I can try to cook our own one of these days.

My girl wanted the spider tempura (RM15.80)…

Spider tempura

… with the soft shell crab and all the vegetable fritters and for her main, she ordered her favourite, the unagi don (RM20.40)…

Unagi don

She wasn’t all that happy with it as it was in dire need of more of the very nice sauce from the unagi to go with the plain white rice.

The total came up to RM87.70, RM101.73 inclusive of 6% SST and 10% service charge.

SUSHI MENTAI, Sibu (2.303279, 111.843161) is located at Wisma Sri Minyak, Lot 3065, S/L4, No. 23&25, Ground Floor, Pedada Lane 7 (Now Jalan Dr. Wong Soon Kai).