Pe­ter Ray Blood

Two friends, Tony Chow Lin On and Iw­er George, in­tro­duced me to sushi a few years ago. I was not im­pressed. It took the in­sis­tence of an­oth­er friend, Neemah Per­sad-Ce­les­tine, and Fil­ipino ex­pert of Japan­ese cui­sine Joel del Castil­lo, to con­vince me that sushi must be added to my grow­ing list of favoured ex­ot­ic foods.

Per­sad-Ce­les­tine got me to vis­it the new­ly-opened sushi bar at the Hy­att Re­gency and I didn't re­gret it–in fact I rel­ished it. Orig­i­nal­ly mis­led in­to think­ing that sushi was mere­ly sea­weed wrapped around over­cooked rice and raw fish, I was pleas­ant­ly en­light­ened to the fact that the del­i­ca­cy is, in fact, made with vine­gar rice, which may or may not in­clude raw fish, as well as a va­ri­ety of sea food, in­clud­ing crab, shrimp or lob­ster, or cooked fish, like tu­na, salmon, oc­to­pus, white fish, fly­ing fish or eel. Ex­per­i­ment­ing with lo­cal in­gre­di­ents, del Castil­lo al­so in­cludes av­o­ca­do in his reper­toire. Sushi is ac­tu­al­ly a healthy way of cook­ing, in that a serv­ing con­sists of a mere 400 calo­ries. The av­er­age serv­ing usu­al­ly con­sists of eight to ten pieces; I sam­pled nine. For open­ers, I had the Philadel­phia roll (salmon, cream cheese, wasabi); tako (oc­to­pus); maguro (tu­na); and, ebi (shrimp).

Per­sad-Ce­les­tine didn't have to do much urg­ing to get me in­to my sec­ond serv­ing, con­sist­ing of spicy tu­na (roast­ed salmon skin, spring onion, ton­garashi, teriya­ki sauce); dy­na­mite roll (salmon skin, spring onion, ton­garashi, soft shell crab, home made spicy sauce); and, grilled salmon (grilled salmon, wasabi, teriya­ki sauce). For lagnaippe, I had del Castil­lo's Tri­ni cre­ation, Trinidad roll (shrimp, tu­na, spring onion, ton­garashi, teriya­ki sauce, Japan­ese mayo). At the end of it all, I just didn't have any more room for dessert–Sesame seed ice cream–or drinks like Sho Chiku Bai Nig­ori or Sake­ti­ni, the lat­ter a cock­tail of Grey Goose vod­ka and Sho Chiku Bai Gin­jo.

Now a con­vert, I cer­tain­ly in­tend to re­turn to the Hy­att for some more of del Castil­lo's sushi morsels. The Hy­att Sushi Bar is open Tues­day-Sat­ur­day, 5 pm�11 pm.