Sushiro, the biggest kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi chain from Japan which sells some 1.36 billion plates at its 530 outlets worldwide, is finally opening its first Southeast Asia outpost in Singapore.

The 162-seat restaurant is located at Tiong Bahru Plaza, and is officially open to the public on August 19. But before they do, 8days.sg went down for a sneak peek at a media preview tasting, tried the sushi, and tell you what to expect when you’re there.

The massive eatery sits beside the new Daiso outlet at Tiong Bahru Plaza. Like its other outlets around the world in countries like Taiwan, Korea and most recently, Hong Kong (its first HK outlet opened just two days ago on August 13), the shop is outfitted with a long conveyor belt to transport plates of sushi. Cosy four-pax booths and counter seats flank the conveyor belt, so customers can reach out and pluck their desired sushi plates off the belt easily.

Think of Sushiro’s concept as somewhat between Genki Sushi and Sushi Express, except it’s way more swish; their conveyor belt is a two-tiered system where the bottom tier features a rotating array of sushi that you can randomly grab anytime like at Sushi Express, while the top tier delivers a la carte orders to your table, similar to Genki Sushi.

The plates for the sushi each come with an electronic tag at their bottom, which allows Sushiro staff to track the plates’ progress as they make their rounds on the conveyor belt.
According to Sushiro Singapore’s manager Sharon Zhang, each plate of sushi is only allowed to travel for 350m before being discarded. “That’s its lifespan on the belt to ensure its freshness,” she tells 8days.sg, adding that the e-tags also help the staff determine which dishes are less popular with customers so they can prepare less stock to minimise wastage.

The machine used to make the rice mounds for sushi is similarly high-tech; it pumps air into each mound to make it fluffier, and can churn out 3,600 rice mounds in an hour. We tried Sushiro’s sushi, and find that its rice is better than the sad, compressed bricks that we usually encounter at some sushi chains; the grains fall apart in our mouth and taste clean (don’t expect vinegary rice here).

There are over 100 items on the menu here, with over 90 being sushi dishes. The sushi is priced at $2.20, $3.20, and $4.80 a plate. There are some 47 types of $2.20 sushi here like Grilled Mackerel and Cod Roe with Mayo, 15 types of mid-tier $3.20 sushi like Boiled Snow Crab and Large Scallop, and five types of $4.80 sushi like Fatty Tuna and Roasted Beef.

There are also side dishes like Chawanmushi with Scallop, petite bowls of ramen in three types of broth: shoyu, tonkotsu and miso, as well as desserts like a Matcha Parfait and cream buns from Japanese cafe Hattendo (which has an outlet in Tanjong Pagar).

For $3.50 per pax, you get unlimited refills, self service-style, for drinks like Heaven & Earth green tea (in your choice of cold or hot from a dispenser located at the drinks station). Other drinks offered include coffee, tea, hot chocolate and a variety of soft drinks.

To celebrate its opening, Sushiro is offering four exclusive-for-its-opening types of sushi at promotional prices. They are: Fatty Tuna ($2.20), Sea Urchin ($4.80), Swordfish ($2.20) and Ark Shell ($2.20). Each customer can order unlimited plates, and the promotion ends when stock runs out, though Sushiro’s PR rep tells us that the chain had flown in “a good amount of stock” for the occasion.

Check out Sushiro’s nosh below:

This sushi features a cut that’s supposedly from the most coveted fattiest portion of the Indian Ocean-caught southern bluefin tuna’s underbelly (called otoro in Japanese). However, our piece didn’t have the usual melt-in-your-mouth texture and looked redder than the usual white-streaked creamy pink otoro. It also tasted more like a lean, though decent, cut of tuna (more minerally than it is unctuous).

Don’t be confused by the name — this $4.80 tuna sushi is different from the $2.20 same-named, promotional-priced one. While it features the same otoro cut, the bluefin tuna used is the more prized, Atlantic bluefin tuna species (from the Atlantic Ocean), which is said to be fattier and better-tasting than its inferior southern cousin. And the taste of this pricier sushi is richer, melty, and vastly superior to its $2.20 counterpart. Order this instead. It’s so much more satisfying.

Another one of Sushiro’s promotional offerings (as a comparison, it costs $8.60 for a piece of uni sushi at Sushi Tei). While this uni sushi appears to be a good deal, the Chilean uni is sadly rather pongy, and has none of the creamy sweetness of good quality uni. Fortunately, there are better sushi here to stuff yourself with (see below).

And here are the side dishes to look forward to:

If you end up visiting Sushiro often enough, you can also accumulate points to redeem their special merchandise, which includes plushie pouches and keychains shaped like critters which are shaped like… nigiri sushi. So cute.

Does Sushiro live up to its name of being the most popular conveyor belt sushi chain in Japan? (It beat other rivals to earn the highest revenue for eight years straight from 2011 to 2018.) In a nutshell, yes. Its imported-from-Japan seafood is fresh, and its sushi rice is better than most local sushi chains’ so far. The prices are very reasonable, too, and slightly cheaper than the insanely popular sushi chain Genki Sushi. But some of their attractively-priced promotional items, like the Fatty Tuna and Sea Urchin Sushi, were a bit of a let-down. We hope Sushiro keeps up their standard after the media preview, when the restaurant opens to the public (get ready to queue).

Sushiro Singapore opens Aug 19 at #02-118 Tiong Bahru Plaza, S168732. Open daily 11am-10pm (last order at 9.30pm). Soft opening hours 11.30pm-9pm (last order at 8.30pm) from August 19-25. www.facebook.com/sushirosingapore.

PHOTOS: ALVIN TEO