TacoCat's TrEats #98: Yummy Sushi at Donki! 🍣
Hey Steemit!
Now that it's been quite a while since Singapore has has been out of lockdown, or what our government has termed "circuit breaker", restaurants have been operating pretty much as usual aside from implementing safe distancing measures. We've also been eating out more and trying new places!
And one of these new places is Don Don Donki!
Source: Little Day Out
If you're unfamiliar, Don Don Donki is a Japanese discount store chain that sells pretty much everything! They have super huge outlets in Japan that are typically entire buildings that are more than 5 stories high!
Donki is definitely one of our favourite stores of all time and we always make it a point to shop there every time we visit Japan! Whether it's for snacks, drinks, daily necessities or souvenirs, Donki's got you covered!
So we were so excited when they decide to expand out of Japan and their first choice was Singapore! The Donki here is a little different though; for starters it's called Don Don Donki here because there is actually a Spanish restaurant named Don Quijote and I guess because it sounds the same it's not allowed. I think they chose the name Don Don Donki because of their signature theme song:
(skip to 0:47 for the chorus)
But a key difference between Singapore and Japan's Donki is that Singapore's Donki has a food court! There are currently 8 outlets in Singapore but I've only visited 4, and there are food courts at Clarke Quay, JEM and JCube. I think I wrote about the one at Clarke Quay before quite some time ago, but it was a different branch and different stall.
This time, we went to the one at JEM (which stands for Jurong East Mall iirc)! And we went on a weekday to avoid crowds, as usual.
Don Don Donki's food court has quite a number of stalls but Donki itself also has a lot of ready-made food available that you can purchase in-store and bring to the food court to sit and enjoy.
Since I'd been craving sushi after not eating it for so long, I decided to try their salmon sushi set!
Sean went to take a long at all the other stalls in the food court to see what other food there was since he's not a fan of raw seafood, while I went to get seats.
Since it was a weekday it wasn't crowded at all and there were seats aplenty for me to choose from.
The food court itself has a warm, modern aesthetic, with dark wood veneer chairs and countless overhead spotlights. It was bright but inviting, and comfortable nonetheless.
Eventually, Sean decided to try this tendon shop that looked really promising!
The shop is called Ginza Tendon Itsuki and here's the menu!
They have a few different dons to try from, with various kinds of tempura. To try a mix of everything, Sean ordered the Mix Tendon, which includes a prawn, crabstick, chicken breast, vegetables and half-boiled egg!
While waiting for Sean's order to be ready, I sat down and tried my sushi first since I was hungry.
This sushi set includes salmon maki and salmon nigiri prepared in 3 different ways. The first is just your typical salmon nigiri, the second is Aburi (grilled salmon) nigiri, and the last is Aburi salmon with teri-mayo!
This was the salmon maki, which tasted pretty typical. It was not bad, nothing to complain about.
This was the salmon nigiri, which was good! Now that I could actually taste more of the salmon it was fresh and not fishy at all! And it was smooth as butter!
This was aburi salmon nigiri, which was my absolutely favourite! It wasn't crispy by any means but it was nicely grilled and had a very slight charred taste to it. It tasted quite different compared to the regular salmon nigiri, but I thought it was a lot yummier!
Unfortunately I think I forgot to take a picture of the aburi salmon with teri-mayo. It might've been a little too messy to snap a pic of too. But it was also really good, if just a tad sweet for me. Still delicious though!
Meanwhile, Sean's food finally arrived!
The bowl was pretty average sized, but the tempura was quite impressive. It was definitely the same standard as those bowls we had in Japan.
Here's a look at the soft boiled egg! It was maybe just a little overdone, but Sean's not a fan of runny eggs like me anyway so it was good enough for him.
I only got a couple of bites from his tendon but it was really tasty! The tempura was nice and crispy and the sticky Japanese rice was perfect. The chicken breast was maybe just a little plain, but the prawns and the vegetables were good. Overall, not bad for 10 bucks! Other places would definitely charge at least 15 for that bowl.
I think my sushi set was only $9.80! Which is actually pretty affordable for salmon. Now that I know Donki has good and cheap sushi it's definitely going to be my go-to place every time I have a sushi craving!
So if you've yet to try the food at Donki, give it a shot!
Thanks so much for reading!
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