Do you know its an achievement to get Carol Tee a.k.a Ellone to treat me (or you) to a decent meal? It took me some betting, persuading, teasing and of course, cheating to get my free meal. However, it was almost more than a year later when she finally treated me.

Sushi Zanmai, highly recommended by Ellone for its relatively cheap sushis and bento sets in her post. Since she would be footing the bill, I went easy on her and suggested this restaurant instead of our pre-agreed Star Hill’s Jogoya.

It’s located somewhere in The Gardens. Yes, it was my first visit to The Gardens, a brief one albeit. I remembered I walked across Little Penang Cafe, the long hallway, upped the escalator and turned right, passing by an Indian restaurant called Cinnamon or something like that. Heh!

Conveyor belt, checked! Chefs making sushi right in front of you, checked! The waiters / waitresses say something in Japanese (Welcome!) whenever a customer walks in, checked! Wasabi, checked! Unagi, checked! Refillable green tea, checked!

Refillable green tea. A little bland though.

My tuna sushi. Well, tasted normal but it was fresh. Too bad they don’t serve my favourite egg mayonnaise sushi. I also took the shrimp sushi because it looked really tempting and delicious. My intuition was right as it was really tasted.

In the middle of the rolled fragrant rice, there’s fresh and juicy prawn in the middle. On the outer layer of the sushi, there’s tiny shredded pieces of unknown stuffs. I suspect that it could be the same ingredient used in the curry chicken rice bibimbab in Sushi Groove.

Carol had noodles with chicken chop and some greens. I don’t know how it tasted, but it ain’t looked appetizing to me.

Carol’s boy friend ordered I-don’t-know-what but it looked colourful.

We shared a plate of salmon sashimi and guo za. The salmon slices were thick, freshed and absolutely delicious after dipping it slightly with the wasabi and soy sauce. The guo za weren’t impressive if you asked me. There were no sliced ginger and vinegar to go along with it. Maybe they did give vinegar, but it probably tasted like soy sauce and I couldn’t differentiate it. The skin was a little too thick to my liking and the fillings weren’t juicy / tasted dry. It was nicely pan fried though.

It won’t be a complete and fulfilling sushi session if there’s no unagi. For that, I ordered their unagi set. For RM25+, I got myself a lot of unagis which made me really happy and grinned from ear to ear. There’s nine pieces of them, nine! Nine!

Unlike most Japanese restaurant, their unagis weren’t as sweet as others, in fact, I tasted a little saltiness in it. Saltiness would go well with white rice compared to sweetness and Sunshi Zanmai’s unagi just hit the right spot.

I wanted to order another set but I would feel bad because Carol would be footing the bill. Too bad I couldn’t do macro and this was the best I could do with my lens. Just look at the white succulent meat coated with thick sweet sauce. Heavenly!

The bill came to RM100+, if I remember correctly. Cheap, but the problem is whether I am willing to drive to Mid Valley after enduring the traffic jam and trouble of finding a parking space. The trouble of switching LRT and KTM stations isn’t very appealing either. I would really love to go back there, but the trouble is how to get there with ease and in peace.