Food and Wine: May 2014

I usually don't visit a newly opened restaurant straight away. It takes time for chefs, waiters and restaurateurs to find their unique expression and routines. Abroad it's very common for restaurants to have soft openings where guests and restaurant staff have time to "practice" on each other, normally with a reduced menu price or sometimes even for free. In Sweden, where labor is so costly this rarely happens.

Sushi Sho on Upplandsgatan, close to Odenplan, had only been opened for three weeks when I decided to go for an early Saturday dinner.

Even though the place was completely new I had tried chef Carl Ishizaki's food before at the shoebox-sized Akki Sushi at Medborgarplatsen. I still eat at Akki from time to time but it's not as good as it used to be when Carl was running the show.

Sushi Sho is not much bigger; 8 seats around the counter and four squeezed seats by the window. Carl, and his single chef colleague, do everything themselves (at least on my visit), taking orders, "cooking" the food, serving, pouring tea, and taking payments. The place is simple in its design but still pleasing to the eye and I like the counter, free from the standard glass display where you can usually view the "fish of the day".

They don't only serve sushi here so if you don't eat raw fish you can go for a donburi.

I chose to go for the omakase (chef's selection menu) which basically is nigiri-zushi served bite by bite including a few other offerings. The nigiri is drizzled with the perfect amount of soy by the chef and made with fresh wasabi and a rice base with unusually low sugar content. This, plus the fact that they use brown sugar for their sushi-zu, gave the rice a more rustic, almost grainy taste. I liked it and you could notice that they put love in everything they do like their home-made gari.

A few of the nigiri weren't perfect though, like the frozen Uni (sea urchin) used twice within the menu. This is normally a favorite item of mine with its sweet, creamy sea flavor but frozen it was rather bitter. Amongst my favorites was the insanely good cod liver, the yummy salmon eggs with egg yolk and yuzu, the pickled mackerel and the nice combo of sweet miso and walnuts to finish with. I must say that, in my opinion, the omakase menu is far too cheap and if they increased the price they would have the option to source even better produce.

This place definitely competes for a place as Stockholm's number one sushi shop and I will definitely be returning many times in the future.

Chef Carl in action.