Sakura Kaiten Sushi

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So a friend of mine is currently over in Japan having the time of her life skiing and eating, sending me pics of her eating adventures (at my request), which of course made me really miss all the amazing food over there.  I thought that it was timely then that our next blog post was on a Japanese dining experience in Melbourne!

If you’re looking for a good sushi train restaurant with top quality produce in Melbourne, then Sakura Kaiten Sushi is one to check out. It’s been on our very long ‘to try’ list for quite some time and finally we did it. The outcome? Why didn’t we try this place earlier?!

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Not to be confused with their sister restaurant Sakura Kaiten II which is located on Lonsdale St, the Sakura Kaiten Sushi we visited is located on Little Collins St, CBD and is the higher rated out of the two. It is a fairly small and intimate place so if you’re like us and don’t want to spend too much time waiting in the queue outside, call up and make a booking. We didn’t think that they took bookings but were pleasantly surprised when we called and they allowed us to reserve two seats.

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Now let’s get straight into the food. Just like most other sushi train restaurants, there are different coloured plates of glorious food that slowly travel by you for your choosing. Each colour represents a price (i.e. orange plates are $2.80, pink plates are $3.80 etc.). But of course being the piglets that we are, Davin and I never take notice of that and more look out for what looks good, generally taking plates off the conveyer belt as fast as they are topping it up. Okay maybe that’s an exaggeration but you know what I mean!

The quality of the produce was the closest reminder of Japan for us. The seafood was definitely fresh and we gobbled up more sashimi and nigiri than we probably should have. It would be too much to list every plate we tried but one of the highlights included the super tuna belly nigiri. Oh my gosh the tuna belly literally brought us back to Tokyo when we were just ordering plates and plates of the nice pink super fatty tuna nigiri over there because it was so good. Well this tuna belly nigiri for Melbourne standards was pretty damn good and pretty close to Japan! The tuna literally melted in our mouths and we could taste the fattiness of it on our lips. Of course we couldn’t stick to just one plate and took a few more plates for our feasting.

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We also really liked the salmon cream cheese roll, the octopus salad, salmon with lobster salad sakura flower, scallop nigiri, grilled salmon nigiri, grilled yellow tail nigiri, calamari nigiri, tsubugai nigiri, salmon belly sashimi, only to name a few! Even their deep fried oysters and chill prawn dumplings were top notch. We were so full by the time we walked out but was very satisfied with the food. Highly recommend if you are craving a taste of Japanese!

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Sakura Kaiten Sushi
Approx $40 AUD per person
Address: 61 Little Collins St, Melbourne CBD, VIC 3000
Phone: +61 3 9663 0898

Sakura Kaiten Sushi Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato