100% shrimp shumai - carefully made piece by piece
Shumai is a Chinese dumpling adopted into Japanese diet. They often are made with minced pork, and served as a part of dim sum. We serve shrimp shumai at Maeda Sushi. We grate the high quality tiger shrimps and carefully round into bite size balls. Steaming, of course, is a very healthy way to cook (no oil used), but it also helps packing the flavor into the pieces, shumai comes out perfectly moist, juicy out of the steamer. The shreded skin provides a unique texture. We place five big pieces on our fallen leaf ceramic plate and serve with soy-Japanese mustard mix. It started out as a special, but it has been so popular, it will be in the permanent menu very soon.
the most coveted seat in the house
When a customer lets the chef choose the content of a sushi meal, we call it OMAKASE (oh-mah-kah-say). When a master chef tends to a customer at the sushi bar and serves his sushi piece by piece, we call this practice TACHI (tah-chee). An ultimate meal at a sushi restaurant is to have a seat at the sushi bar, ask for an OMAKASE meal and be served TACHI style. If you like to have some sake, the chef will start with some appetizers to match your selection. To give that kind of service, though, the chef must be familiar with the customer’s likes and dislikes, whether he/she tends to have a few drinks, size of appetite, etc. So the customer hopefully have visited our sushi bar a few times before making a reservation to be served TACHI (a reservation is a must, as you can imagine). Here is an example of Chef Maeda’s omakase course served tachi style to a Japanese customer and his associate, one late afternoon in June…as they both had to drive, they were not going to drink much.
*customers order Sapporo Beer
Tsukidashi (appetizer) – Jellyfish with sesame marinade
*Chef asked the customer, “should I make sushi?” and customers nod, “please.”
* If it was a dinner and the customers were to have more drinks before sushi, then Chef might have started by asking, “should I cut a few sashimi?” Customers may have answered, “Yes, your kampachi looks really good. Can you cut kampachi and some others? I’d also like your Ikura Oroshi.”
*hot green tea is served
Fluke Fin & Red Snapper side by side
Yellowtail & Kampachi side by side
Two pieces of Medium Fatty Tuna
Horse Mackerel
Sardine
Mackerel
Sea Urchin
*Clam Miso Soup is served
Salmon Roe
Abalone
Syako (Mantis Shrimp)
Sea Eel
Egg (sashimi)
*Chef asks, “Should I roll something?” Customers, “No thank you, it was just right.”
*Agari green tea is served
We feel these customers left very satisfied after enjoying the wide variety of flavors, textures, the different shapes and colors, and of course, conversing with Chef Maeda. Chef cannot serve everyone this way. He has to get to know you first. After all, this is the ultimate experience every sushi connoisseur covets.
Maeda Sushi Restaurant will be closed on Friday, July 4th.
We will be back on regular hours on Saturday.
Happy July Fourth!
