Heading East for sushi

I had a major craving for good sushi, and went to East. East Japanese Restaurant is found in the Courtyard, a fancy, high-end food court in the Market Place on Constant Spring Road. It is very popular, so popular that you need to reserve a table ahead if you want to make sure that you'd get to eat there.

East serves good, authentic sushi, though it doesn't carry raw shellfish, which was why I preferred the Japanese restaurant at Hilton before when it existed - basically, I only eat shellfish and toro when it comes to sushi. Today, I indulged myself in a sushi feast, with toro, salmon toro and uni, all of which were of good quality, though I couldn't capture it well in my photo above. I also had negi-toro, which I thought were in need of stronger negi flavour.

As is the case with every other sushi restaurant in the world, sushi at East is very expensive, and each little piece of sushi costs 300JMD. For the 6 pieces I had, I was charged 1800JMD (before tax), which is about US$25... Negi-toro was 430JMD (US$6).

Despite the popularity and the high pricing, the chef said the business was struggling. The price of raw fish went up by 30% in the last year because of the rise in the fuel cost that raised the cost for transporting fish. Then, due to the financial crisis in U.S., affluent Kingstonians are reducuing the frequency of their visits to this expensive restaurant. Here again, we spot a want, not a need, called sushi, though for me, sushi is nearly a need, and I really hope that East will survive this difficult time.