Pickle and I used our reclaimed play time from our rainy work day this past weekend for a mid-week date night yesterday. We went for the classic dinner + a movie. After reading some reviews on sushi places, we landed on a little 6-table joint in Parramatta called Kanzo. There is no shortage of sushi around here, but much of the selection is pre-made and (shockingly) even more bastardized than what we have in America. There's a wealth of culinary diversity (Chinese, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Indian, Lebanese - you name it, we've got it), and, aside from Mexican and South American food (proximity is definitely on our side in the States), you can find it in pretty authentic form. Nooooot so much with the sushi. Literally every place I've seen thus far has chicken finger rolls (that's fried chicken, people - not even a fish stick!), cooked tuna rolls (think grey tuna salad - not beautiful tuna nigiri scorched with a torch), even a variety of chicken or beef teriyaki - basically, if you roll it up in rice and package it in seaweed (often squeezing more mayo on top than even the typical American wants to ingest), you can sell it as sushi. It's a little like peddling pizza hot pockets as fine Italian cuisine. Though not as prevalent as the fast food style, you can find some more authentic varieties at sit-down places, and Kanzo was a yummy place to start.
It was limited in terms of variety, yet offered three sizes from which to choose. They had small (6 pieces), which was makizushi (nori outside), medium (6 pieces) uramaki (rice outside), and large rolls (8 pieces), which ended up being futomaki (oversized) though they weren't labeled as such. There were none with raw tuna (only cooked - ?!?), but they did offer sashimi. We settled on two large rolls - one smoked salmon + avocado and the other crab stick + avocado, and a medium plate of of sashimi. The waitress asked if we wanted one large roll split half and half, but we clarified that we actually wanted two separate rolls. After they arrived, we understood why she asked...holy sumo sushi! We've been known to throw down an alarming amount of sushi for two people, but this was sushi on steroids. |
After seaweed salad, our sashimi arrived first and far exceeded my expectations - the salmon and tuna were generously portioned and amazingly fresh. Pickle sampled it (this was his first taste of sashimi), but decided to stick with the sushi, so I pretty much went lone wolf on the whole plate...without protest. When the sushi arrived, we saw that we had clearly underestimated the size of the "large rolls"...each piece was about the size of a White Castle burger. Our meal was more than we could tackle, but we made a valiant effort, and now we know we can stuff ourselves happy with one roll at Kanzo!
After our fish feast, we headed to Sydney Olympic Park. It was a cool feeling to be at the site of the former Olympic games, though it was eerily vacant. I imagined how crowded and energized the place must have been during the 2000 games as we walked through the empty train station and down by the stadium. They still use the facilities, which are beautiful - they're currently hosting the AFC Asian Cup.
We wandered around a bit before making our way to the park to wait for our movie. The cost for a movie ticket is typically about $20 (per person, 2D movie, no concessions), yielding a pretty pricey dinner-and-a-movie date night, but I found that Sydney Olympic Park was offering free outdoor movies for two weeks, so we brought our blanket and watched Saving Mr. Banks under the stars. It was an fantastic venue and a great movie (we've both seen it multiple times - one of my favorites from 2013) for an unbeatable price. Bonus: we got to watch flying foxes head out to scavenge for food at dusk before the movie started...love them!
It was a pretty nice little spin on a traditional date night.