Love for the Locals: Sushi Train

Sushi Train (10725-104 Avenue, Edmonton, AB), the only conveyor belt sushi restaurant in Edmonton opened for business last month in the MacEwan University area, next door to Happy Harbor Comics (another place worth visiting to satisfy a different kind of hunger)! I was super excited when the Edmonton food blogs started talking about it, and my friend Melissa made a visit. However, this apparently isn't the first time a restaurant of its sort has been in town. According to my parents, there used to be one in West Edmonton Mall called Sakura, but it closed a long time ago. Seeing as I had never been to a kaiten-zushi or "rotation sushi" place before, P and I gave it a try last week!

The way that kaiten-zushi works is the sushi chefs in the centre will make dishes, and place them on certain coloured plates to indicate pricing. A short list with a legend will be provided to customers at the tables. Most people will be seated around the elliptical sushi bar, and in this case, there were also some tables for groups on the sides. The dishes on the conveyor belt are self-serve, and it's essentially a la carte. For nigiri, you'll get 2 pieces, and servings of appetizers and maki will be half-orders. You also have the option of ordering from the menu directly if something you want isn't travelling on the belt. 

A big thank you to P for his awesome photos! The less than awesome photos were provided by yours truly...

Sushi Train!

Woo~ Conveyor belt!

Sushi chef at work!

The menu! They even have the pictures on the appropriately coloured plates for your reference. Pictures are helpful.

Their price list. P said that for kaiten-zushi, the prices are a bit steep, but yay for colour-coding!

Avocado - inside-out maki with cream cheese and crab flakes with avocado slices on top. Our first plate of the meal! This is actually the first time I've enjoyed maki with cream cheese inside! I usually pick it off and put the slab of cream cheese on P's piece, but I think it was just the right amount to give the roll a creamy taste and texture without the weird cow's milk aftertaste I usually get from cream cheese. Bravo!

Salmon! - nigiri with a slice of fresh salmon held together by a dab of wasabi. A staple in our sushi orders, so we got 2 plates of it. 

Red Dragon - inside-out maki with tempura shrimp and cucumber inside, topped with salmon, tobiko, and spicy mayo.  Not bad, but not spicy. We grabbed this one from the conveyor belt, so it was like a half-order. So actually, if you get two from the conveyor belt, it costs less than getting an order from the sushi bar.

Spicy Pork - This was the special of the day, and it was similarly cooked to "Sweet and Sour Pork", but seasoned with Korean gochujang instead. P and I were not really fans...it was interesting that they used gochujang instead of a Japanese marinade.

Chop Chop - maki with chopped fresh scallop with mayo and tobiko. My favourite thing to order when we go for sushi. I missed it so much since they didn't have this on any Japanese menu in Londontown. It wasn't showing up on the conveyor belt, so we ordered this one. Good ratio of chop chop to rice :)

Takoyaki - Balls of batter with pieces of octopus fried in a special takoyaki pan, topped with takoyaki sauce (like a thicker Worcestershire), mayo, green onion, and bonito flakes. This is a popular Japanese street food, and another one of my favourites (if done well, and this one was pretty decent).

Tai - nigiri with fresh snapper held together by a dab of wasabi. Not bad :) 

Dynamite - inside-out maki with tempura shrimp, mayo, avocado, crab flake, and cucumber inside, with spicy mayo drizzled over top. This is what I expected for a Dynamite roll. They always had one of this name on menus in London, but it was never spicy, and it's not because it wasn't spicy enough. There was actually no spice. This one was good though  :)

Toro - nigiri with fresh tuna held together with a dab of wasabi. Not bad, but not as fresh as most tuna we've had. P seemed a little bit sad. (Triple rhyme!)

Spicy Tuna - inside-out maki with fresh tuna, cucumber, and gochujang. Again with the gochujang...not what we were expecting taste-wise, and not one of our favourites. Poor P and his less than amazing tuna fix on this trip...

Our haul of 11 plates - 7 red, 2 green, 1 blue, and 1 black. We purposely didn't eat until we were full because the prices add up quite a bit, and we were going to play badminton anyways. This was about $55 worth. 

Overall, Sushi Train is not bad. I felt like it was more novelty than anything, especially because the prices were a bit higher than most kaiten-zushi. If we were looking for a more filling meal for a more reasonable price, we probably could have gone for AYCE. We could have also gone elsewhere for better quality sushi. However, given that the place is the only one of its kind in Edmonton, they can afford to be like that. Was the sushi spectacular? Mmm...not really. Even so, it was exciting and satisfying for my first experience with sushi coming to me on a conveyor belt. If you're a first-timer in that realm like me, then give it a shot! The service was very welcoming and pleasant, and if you're in the area, why not?

P says that there's a real sushi train place somewhere in Banff, so I'm super looking forward to that!

-M