After Tom and I enjoyed some pretty awesome sushi in Miami, we’ve been on the hunt to find a good local source of the Japanese speciality. So I got pretty excited when I saw Zushi Banbury, based in Parson Street, open its doors five weeks ago. Now it’s not quite the experience we enjoyed in Miami ( no surprise there!) but the food is really fresh and tasty. Over a catch up, fellow diner, Maxine, (thanks for being a good sport!) made our way through a selection of the menu!
Being fairly novice when it comes to ordering sushi, the friendly staff were able to give advice on how much we’d need to order and our waitress was able to break down the menu in two halves: small bites and mains. From the outside, Zushi doesn’t look much (mind you neither does Taberu in Oxford’s Cowley Rd) but hungry customers were queuing up for free spaces. I’m pleased I booked! Inside minimalist, modern tables are laid with earthenware crockery, split bamboo mats and small soy jugs in place of usual salt ‘n’ pepper.
Every table was full and the waitress, who only joined the team two weeks ago, said they’d had a full house every night!
We had two starters including eight pieces of crab-stick and avocado California rolls (we both agreed that this was our favourite) and vegetable deep fried goyza dumpling with teriyaki. For mains I had the pumpkin katsu curry. To be fair it was a good job that Maxine and I weren’t in a hurry and we had plenty of time for our starters to go down. Plus I think that the chef may have momentarily forgotten Maxine’s Korean barbecue main, but it was yummy when it arrived. By the time I’d drank a couple Ashai beers, brewed from rice in Japan, we enjoyed two scoops of unusually flavoured ice cream – green tea and black sesame (definitely the better of the two, the green tea tastes very much of green tea!) Our dinner was so good, I order take out for lunch the next day!
