Kushi (Auckland CBD, New Zealand)

Yes, it’s another Japanese restaurant, I just can’t get enough of it. The idea of sashimi and sushi easily makes me drool. This place today that we are featuring is a new discovery after I am looking for a mid-priced Japanese restaurant for my team at work, centrally located its quite easy to find. The place is quite huge as well and it can seat a lot of diners, definitely can fit 100 easily.

They have a simple lunch menu, one pager means less stress and its quite straight forward, so all you see are bento boxes, sushi, sashimi and sharing plates that they call tapas. We did not muck around during our visit, so after grabbing some Kirin we already ordered some Large Sashimi (NZ$52.95) which is a large platter that consists of 7 sashimi varieties, like Scampi, Shrimps, Scallops, Snapper, Tuna, Salmon and Kingfish where some of them were topped with salmon roe and caviar.

It was a fairly big and impressive looking platter divided into 4 sections, where each section may contain 12 slices of fresh fish. This is what sashimi lover’s dreams are made of. This was just our starter, for mains to make it simple we just ordered bento boxes and we got three different varieties.

First was the Tonkatsu Bento (NZ$21.50) served with a generous slice of Pork Tonkatsu, two sushi’s, two nigiri, prawn and vegetable tempura and salad. Both my colleagues who had tried this said it was the best tonkatsu they ever had tried, I sort of agreed but with my experience in trying out a lot of Japanese restaurants there may be better ones but certainly Kushi made it really good, pork was very juicy, outside was very crunchy, tastes clean (not oily) and well-seasoned. One of the best balanced tonkatsu’s I ever tried.

Next was this Spicy Chicken Bento (NZ$20.50) same trimmings as with the Tonkatsu Bento but served with a fried chicken bites in a sweet savoury spicy sauce. Though the name suggests it was spicy, this one was way below the scale of spiciness, I can understand why that was the case, it is because the Japanese are not really fond of chilli hot flavour. It was still good though.

Then there was this Teriyaki Salmon Bento (NZ$23.50), again same trimmings but this time this bento is served with 4 small fillets of salmon seasoned with teriyaki sauce, I love this! All bentos are served with rice and miso which is commendable (yes miso can taste different depending on which restaurant sells them).

Just with the bento and sashimi platter we were stuffed up which leaves us no room for dessert even if we really like a nice scoop of Matcha and Black Sesame Ice Cream.

Overall, I am very happy with what we had, the place is nice and clean, the staff were helpful and most importantly the food was great. Will definitely be coming back here and try their other offerings.

Kushi Japanese Restaurant
Address: Shop A 22 Durham St West Auckland CBD, New Zealand
Phone: +649 368 4000
Website: http://www.kushi.co.nz/