Sakura Sushi is located in a small mall across from Richmond Center.  The address is: #4-6390 No. 3 Road, Richmond.  The shop is fairly small so it would be easy to miss it if you aren’t looking. The restaurant is run by Japanese people and the service is great.  The inside of the shop is nothing fancy.  But I don’t care much for deco as long as the sushi is good and fresh.  They have coupons available on their website.  And they have stamp cards where you can get a stamp for every $6 spent and you can get free cucumber roll for 5 stamps, salmon roll for 10 stamps, California roll for 15 stamps, and dynamite roll for 20 stamps.

And this is what we ordered: the Saba Battera for $7, Sakura Roll for $5.25, Tuna Tataki for $5, and Tuna -Zuke for $1.75/piece.

They have some specials posted on the walls.  This reminds me of the walls at Ming Tak Cafe.  They have a lot of different sushi and sashimi.  It’s not the typical tuna and salmon Japanese restaurant.

The first thing that arrived was a miso soup.  We didn’t order a bento so I was surprised that each person was given a bowl.  I think they give it to everyone despite what you ordered.  Wow.  That’s great.  It’s always the small things like this that makes a restaurant good and want to make people return.  The waitress was super friendly and polite.

And here is the Sakura Roll.  I loved the bright colors of this roll.  The colors reminded me of sunshine and I loved the color combination.  I don’t think it resembles sakura flowers but it’s still very colorful.

Ingredients inside the sakura roll include egg, tuna, cucumber, avocado, wild salmon and imitation crab meat.  YUM~  Those are all my favorite ingredients wrapped in one.  My favorite will always be imitation crab meat.

This is the Saba Battera.  I was very curious about this and wanted to order it for variety.  I will always love salmon sashimi though~  The texture and taste of this saba battera was very different.  It was actually a bit sour.  Saba is Japanese for mackerel.  This was actually a bit chewy and not as soft as tuna.  I couldn’t figure out the sour taste, but I finally noticed the thin layer on the top.  iPanda couldn’t figure out what it was so we asked the waitress.  However, she couldn’t really answer us.  Does anyone know what that thin sheet on the top of the saba is?  Hmm…..

Battera sushi is a basically pressed sushi.  That’s why it came out so rectangle. These saba battera were pressed using a mold.  I personally prefer the hand pressed ones because the rice in pressed sushi are compressed too much.

And here are the two pieces of Tuna Zuke.  Zuke means pickle or soak.  So the tuna was  marinated in a soy sauce, mirin (sweet rice wine) and sake sauce.  The small dab of wasabi on top acted as very nice decoration on top.

I was very surprised that this was chewy as well.  Tuna sashimi is normally very soft, but after it has been marinated the texture was very chewy.  This was a bit salty so you probably don’t even need to dip it in soy sauce.  It was very good already by itself.

We also ordered some tuna tataki.  Tuna Tataki is a piece of tuna that was seared with a pan so that the outside layer is cooked adn the inside is still raw.  I like it because it offers variety in texture where the outside layer is rough and the inside is smooth and soft.

But I didn’t really enjoy the ones I had here because they seared the outside layer too much.  As well, the outer layer was kind of bland.  Tuna Tataki is normally rolled in cracked black pepper, but I didn’t really taste that.

Overall, they have some more unique sushi and sashimi rolls here.  Their prices are reasonable, service is good, and good variety of fishes.