Western Oregon Journal

Issue date: 2/18/09 Section: Culture

Stepping into Sushi Kyo is a completely different experience than walking into any other local sushi restaurant. You can forget a limited menu, or only being able to read about the sushi or look at pictures; you can also forget about paying $40 for a sushi dinner.
Welcome to sushi of the 21st century--it comes on a conveyor belt, amusing you with a never-ending cycle of tempting food moving around the restaurant. Sushi chefs are at the front of the restaurant, ready to make anything that you do not see on the conveyor belt, or if you simply want something fresh. They are also very helpful, and explain anything you have questions about. They will even custom-make sushi for you.
All of the food comes on small plates, and the color of the plate tells you the price of the dish. Red dishes are $1.25, and include the cheaper things like mushrooms stuffed with fish eggs, sweetener; a cheese sauce and a crab salad sushi. Yellow dishes are $1.65, and include salad rolls with shrimp, fruit dishes and crab wontons. Green dishes are $1.95 and include parchment chicken, salmon, avocado sushi and spicy tuna sushi. Blue dishes are the most expensive at $2.35, which are the more costly things like eel, salmon egg and baby octopus sushi.
The sushi at Sushi Kyo is certainly what you go there for, and it is reasonably priced and delicious. Some of the basic sushi types, like the salmon and avocado, are a little bland as they put very small pieces of fish in them. For the most part though, the sushi is on-par with fancier sushi restaurants. The eel, crab, baby octopus and spicy tuna were all terrific.
Some of the non-sushi options were not as good as they could have been, due to the temperature. If you choose to try some of those options, you can ask them to make them fresh for you. The sesame balls (round cooked dough with a sweet red bean center, rolled in sesame seeds) and pot stickers both tasted very good, but were lukewarm. The parchment chicken (chicken baked in parchment paper, with teriyaki sauce) hardly tasted like sauce, but rather just baked chicken. The stuffed mushrooms, however, were very unique and delicious.
For dessert, they offer fruit, cheesecake and chocolate cake. Drinks include canned soda, water and tea. They also have wasabi, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and hot sauces available for you to complement your food with. Service is friendly and helpful, and makes the experience of dining off of a conveyor belt very enjoyable.

Sushi
The term sushi actually means the sweetened rice. The fish is the sashimi. When put together, we call it "sushi," but the name is only actually referring to the rice. The terms sushi and zushi mean different things in different countries.


California roll
American style sushi, usually with imitation crab and cucumber


Nigiri-zushi
Thin strips of rice, topped with a piece of raw or cooked fish

Inari-zushi
Fried tofu, stuffed with sweet rice and sometimes vegetables

Sashimi
Prepared with raw fish

Kim chee
Spicy, marinated cabbage

Agari
Green tea

Sake
Rice wine

Gari
Pickled ginger, often eaten with sushi as a palate cleanser.

Nori
Dried sheets of seaweed used to make sushi


Wasabi
Japanese "horseradish." A spicy green topping used for sushi

Chakin-zushi
Vinegared rice in an egg wrap, instead of seaweed


Chirashi-sushi
Bowl of rice, with more vinegar than sushi typically so it is less sweet, topped with various raw types of fish


Roe
General term for fish eggs, used in many types of sushi


Miso
Soy bean paste

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