PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIAYou can always tell a good Japanese restaurant from the queue of Japanese people waiting out the front for a table, which is often the case at Surry Hills’s Sushi Suma. In fact, this place has become so popular that the owners have recently opened a waiting room upstairs where diners can read through the menu and sip on their BYO’s until a table becomes available.
Herding the sushi seekers in and out of the relatively small and tightly packed dining room is an art form of which the waitstaff have mastered. However, this restaurant still utilises the traditional Japanese way of serving food with little bowls of soy sauce and miso soup and, of course, nose-smarting wasabi on the side. Big boat shaped platters of colourful sashimi feature at most tables along with the generous seaweed salad, which is not only healthy and fresh, but delicious and an ideal accompaniment to soothe an over-enthusiastic wasabi hit. Agedasi tofu melts in your mouth while the tempura has a satisfying crunch. Although Sushi Suma offers a pretty standard Japanese menu, the quality and taste reach a somewhat higher note than your average sushi joint. Nevertheless, if the menu flummoxes you, the chef provides set dinner suggestions, such as the frequently ordered Teriyuaki Dinner, that guarantee to give you a broad range of flavour sensations. One thing is for sure, you will be back – this food is highly addictive.
Annabel Wise