I had sushi at a sushi bar after quite a while. Also with the posts
about kaiten suhi recently, I finally made it all the way to Sushi
Station (Rolling Meadows, IL - a NW suburb of Chicago). There had been
a detailed post about this from "Ron" (08/29/02) - so I'm not going
too much into the details about the place itself. This was my first
time at a kaiten sushi place. There were three chefs - one much older
Japanese itamae and two young Hispanic itamae (Jesus, pronounced
Hay-soos, was the one we sat closest to) . The older itamae was at the
'front' while the others were on one side of the rectangular area the
conveyor (inside a glass tube) moved around. At the 'back' end of the
rectangle there was a large kitchen area - where I suppose the tempura
and other cooked items (baked oysters) were prepared. Prepared rice
ball for nigiri on a large tray also came out of there and were placed
near the Japanese itamaesan ("Pappasan" as the others called him -
incidentally the two non japanese itamaes conversed with him and other
waitstaff in japanese - beyond the mere names of fish/dishes).
Pappasan was from his hand movements
in making the nigiris clearly a traditionally trained itamae.

The oshibori we got was prepackaged - like a large version of a
cleansing wipe you get on airplanes and heated.

A sign at the bar where we sat said fish came in from Osaka Market in
Japan. The lady who showed us to our seats also gave us a sheets of
'specials' and mentioned that these were the weekend specials and had
been flown in from Japan (we went around 7pm on Friday). The specials
and any other items you had to ask the waitstaff. Some of the specials
also made their way onto the conveyor - no difference in price. The
colour of the plate you took off the conveyor was an indicator of the
price ($1, 2, 3, 4 or 6). One of the not so regular nigiris I noticed
were scallop (not a special - and I didn't try it). Some of the items
on special I did try (for the first time) were raw octopus (nigiri
with a very thin semicircular slice of lemon between the two pieces -
not between the octopus and rice) ($3) , horse mackeral (aji) ($6, 2
nigiris), white salmon (shiro sake), negi-toro handroll. I didn't
care too much for the texture of the raw octopus. Aji I've had before
- also it was on the conveyor (non-special, $3/ 2pc) with ginger and
scallion on top) - but this was fantastic. The toro was fantastic too.
I liked the white salmon ($4 /2pcs) as well - tasted like a mild
version of regular salmon. It looked like albino salmon - white (like
scallop) with slighter paler striations of fat.

Has anybody else had this 'white salmon' before? I had not even heard
of it - either in sushi bars or in this ng (in the past 5yrs). What is
it?

The ume-shisho roll I asked for perplexed the waitress a bit but Jesus
who was close by was very happy to oblige. Fantastic Uni at $4/pcs
was a steal.

The two of us had about 16 plates (at various prices) and 1 asahi
(large), tea and mochi stuffed with redbean paste (azuki?) and wrapped
in "Similar to bamboo leaves that imparts the flavour to the mochi" -
came to $55. It was a great eating experience, but I did miss
interacting/ chatting with the itamaesans.


Das