Josh, the owner of the famous HK food blog, Chaxiubao, readily agreed to meet up for dinner shortly after I contacted him.
“You are a fish person right? How about sushi?”
You can never go wrong with sushi.
With that, we were led to Sushi Imamura, located at this tall and non-descript building that amazingly houses nothing but levels and levels of restaurants and bars. As we stepped in to join Josh at the counter, I felt reassured to see a Japanese chef already hard at work serving a pair of Japanese ladies. I would later find out, he was none other than Take-chan, the chef/owner. Anyway, needless to say, I was excited about what the rest of the evening would bring.
We decided to save brainwork and go omakase. We started with some appetizers and then fresh sashimi, each kind served ala minute and piece by piece.
It must be the season for bivalves of all sort, because we got an enslaught of them. But because I am not a big fan of most of them, I could only remember the x-large oyster, which had just arrived earlier that day, and was huge that it could be cut into three sections. Served with a bit of lime and ponzu sauce, it was sublime and tasting every bit like the sea.
An interesting take on the geoduck sashimi was this version wrapped with crunchy cucumber and then with nori and sesame seeds. The latter ingredients lent their umami flavours to the otherwise tasteless geoduck and turned this “maki” into a tasty treat.
The most interesting item was definitely the shirouo. In fact, it is by far the most interesting thing I had ever eaten. These are very small transparent fish to be eaten alive. We were instructed to let them “dance” in the mouth first before finishing them off. They were surprisingly not very metallic in taste and the texture was a little bit similar to eating konnyaku.
We could not resist fresh uni when we found out they were available. Unfortunately, these ones were not as full of roe and not as creamy and rich as we had hoped for. I don’t mean to imply they were bad, because they were good, just not as satisfying.
The other highlight for me was the kuruma ebi. This black shrimp is not commonly available. The body was plump and slightly chewy with a bit of bite. Its big head was later deep fried to be enjoyed as “prawn crackers”.After our sashimi course, Take-san took over and made us our sushi. His sushi was beautifully made at just the right size. The rice tasted a little bit off balance, with the sour note a notch beyond my personal preference. Otherwise, they would have been perfect.
A couple of pieces were particularly memorable because of their appearance. One was this kohada sushi. I took a picture of Take-san plaiting the fish into this beautiful creation. He sauced it with his special house sauce before requesting for us to eat it as it was.
The other one was this shima aji sushi topped with a pickled sakura flower. The sourish flower contrasted with the fish, inevitably highlighting the sweetness from the fish.
The whole meal cost about HKD 1,200 per person, without sake or other drinks. Not cheap but certainly oishii deshita!
Sushi Imamura
523-527
16/F
Tel: (+852) 28360035
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