If you haven’t been to Japan’s Tsukiji market and crave badly for fresh sashimi, fret not as there is a Japanese restaurant right on our shores with the name Tsukiji Fish market serving some pretty awesome food.
The restaurant is located on the roof top level of Orchard Central and has a pretty neat view of the stretch of Orchard road if you get one of the tables by the window. Unfortunately, it was raining while we were there so the view is foggy and blur the whole time.
The restaurant is typical in Japanese style with warm wooden seating and tables and fabric curtains with Japanese design. The restaurant is very popular and gets crowded during meal times so if you do not have a reservations, do visit them before meal time.
The menu is simply put together with laminated A4 printed paper with various pictures of the real Tsukiji Market in Japan.
There are various types of dishes served here and it generally feels more like a Japan izakaya restaurant instead.
We ordered the sashimi and it came in this delightful boat dish and had 8 kinds of sashimi served on it.
Taking a closer look, the sashimi were extremely fresh and moderate in thickness but the quality was good as all of them were naturally sweet with great texture and bite. There was tuna, scallops, salmon, yellowtail, swordfish, sweet prawn and salmon roe.
Right at the front of the boat was a bowl of uni – sea urchin sashimi. The uni was fresh but still not as nice as some of the ones I had in Japan.
We had oysters as well and they were considered fresh but not the milky kind I would have preferred. The oysters were rather juicy and big in size as well. The price is quite affordable for 5 pieces.
They had a large selection of maki as well with some good combination of ingredients like this roll we had which has salmon, foe grais, egg, crab meat and ebiko.
The fried squid was done nicely till each tentacles are golden brown and crispy. This would be perfect with beer.
The chicken wings were fried till very dry and the skin was crispy with almost no batter. The chicken was fried naked so the skin was fabulously crispy and dry and the meat was slightly dry as well. This wing will make you reach for your drinks due to the dryness and the salty sauce.
The best thing to have on a rainy day is hot pot so we had the collagen chicken pot which had loads of vegetables, chicken chunks, scallops and thick collagen broth. For a refill on the broth, we had to pay additional $5 for a small pot where we can add the soup ourselves. Personally, the soup given was not enough to cook the ingredients so having to pay for additional soup did not sit very well for me especially if it is a hot pot dish. If the pot was huge, I would have understood but the pot was very shallow and there is very little soup.
Overall, the service of the restaurant is quite good with attentive staff and the food is generally ok although by having the name of Tsukiji Fish Market, it did not really live up to the expectations. In terms of quality and freshness, it is still on par to Tsukiji Market but as a Japanese restaurant, the freshness and taste for the food is good.
Address: 181 orchard road, ＃12-02 Orchard Central, 238896
Operating hours: 12 to 2.30 pm and 6 to 10 pm ( additional service of 3 to 5 pm for Sat and Sun)
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