After slightly more than a year and a half, this was my second visit to Chikuwa Tei.
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| Chikuwa Sushi, $25 |
I must say that their menu is quite poorly designed. It was purely text and very wordy, so it wasn't easy browsing through to find what you want to order. Despite having come here before, it took me a while before I could find their well-known Chikuwa Sushi set, which I ordered during my previous visit in 2013. It was still priced at $25 now.
The set still consists of four different types of sashimi - salmon, tuna, sea bream, and swordfish. But this time I felt that the standards seemed to have deteriorated slightly. The sea bream and swordfish were still as good as before, but the salmon and tuna weren't. The salmon didn't seem as fresh as before, while the tuna was a bit soggy - as if it was left outside for a while before serving. The rice also didn't appear to be those higher-quality rice used for sushi or other Japanese dishes.
In the end, I wasn't as satisfied with this as I was during my past visit. But at $25, it is still value-for-money.
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| Salmon Skin, $5 |
I am a fan of fish skin, and I always order it at restaurants. It is usually prepared very differently across restaurants - for example, Sushi Tei serves them in smaller strips but with more of the salmon meat attached. Tunglok Tea House does skin-only but with salted egg, while Ichiban Boshi's is more like Sushi Tei's but more crispy (I think it is also fried with a bit of flour as well).
Chikuwa Tei's was purely skin with no meat at all. Delightfully crispy, the teriyaki sauce drizzled on it also goes quite well with it. It also comes with some mayonnaise and fish roe on it, which serves as a equally good accompaniment to the skin compared to the teriyaki sauce.
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| Grilled Ika with Teriyaki Sauce, $15 |
Taste-wise this was all right, but the texture was a bit too tough and rubbery. A dish which you can skip unless you are a huge fan of squid and must order it to try.
Past visit:
5th September 2013
