Restaurant Review: Soooshi

Whether or not I had been enlisted to review St. Andrew’s newest foodie establishment, I would have been first in the queue at Soooshi on the day of it’s opening. This moment had been long coming.

Soooshi is a venture set up by students and ingeniously takes over one of our day-time favourites (Zest2Go) on Friday, Saturday & Sunday by night, (1800 – 2300) catering to a dinner time crowd. The venue looks the same as in the day, but then again I can’t really imagine how they’d transform it with frequent & quick reversion so necessary. Similarly to its daytime counterpart, it is primarily intended as a casual takeaway joint, with little seating.

The menu is concise, which I like as it implies quality over quantity, providing 3 sushi sets in ‘large’ and ‘small’ and a small section of individual rolls. My only qualm about the menu is a lack of variety between the 3 selections, with the ‘Toshima’ and ‘Minato’ reading very similarly. It would be nice to see more variety, for example having a theme throughout each box, e.g. a spicy box, or a solely tuna based box, etc. The ‘Suginami’ option was unavailable due to issues with suppliers, which was disappointing as the ‘spring onion & mango maki’ sounds the most interesting on the menu. There is also a lack of vegetarian options, which is surprising as I’m sure it would be very easy (and cost-effective) to put together a vegetarian box. However, I’m sure Soooshi have plans on expansion, with them still being at an embryonic stage.

So how does it taste? I find that I can easily discern between really bad sushi and really good sushi, however it is the swathes in between that I find taste all rather similar. Soooshi’s sushi fell into this bracket and tasted…well… like sushi. My only criticisms were that the seaweed was on the chewy side and the amount of filling was slightly stingy, but with the accessible price point it’s hard to complain.

Soooshi doubly filled the sushi shaped hole in my appetite and in the restaurant market that the lack of a sushi establishment had carved out in St. Andrews. Whilst it lacks the pizzazz of other sushi vendors I have been to in the past, any ‘ole hole in the wall that doles out fresh sushi is fine by me.

The question is, will Soooshi be able to compete when Pret comes to town with its surprisingly good (and daily…) Japanese offerings?