Hello friends! It’s been a while since my last installment of my adventures in Taiwan. This time it’s all about the sushi and Japanese food. I’m always weary about eating Japanese food elsewhere because the seafood in Vancouver is relatively fresh. Addiction aquatic development is located in Zhongshan District and takes Japanese food to a whole new level.
Addiction Aquatic Development is one of the most famous Japanese “restaurants” in Taiwan. They sell all sorts of fresh seafood from the ports so you can expect everything to be of tip top quality
After walking through the tanks of live seafood for purchase, you’ll find yourself at the Japanese marketplace before reaching the restaurant. The restaurant is served a la carte or through sets.
Addiction aquatic development restaurant
Something unique about the restaurant here is that you have to eat at the sushi bar standing up. This may seem foreign to some but this is how all sushi bars are like in Japan.
Behind the counter, there were about 10 sushi chefs at work preparing everyone’s meals. Although it was a busy restaurant, the hustle and bustle didn’t take away from how delicate their work was.
From the bar you can look into how fresh their fish was from behind the class. They make sure everything is refrigerated properly and you could tell nothing was frozen beforehand.
Old bean and I decided to get the set meal. There’s a few tiers of it but we went with the $60 CAD set and added a nigiri set on top of it. I’ve never had a Japanese meal at this price point so I had some high expectations for what was to come.
Salad
The salad came first. It was made up of romaine lettuce, onions and ikura fish roe with a citrus sauce on top. I’m not a huge fan of ikura typically because it’s too fishy for my liking but this one was unlike anything I’ve had before. It was fresh and didn’t have an oily fish taste at all. It was amazing.
Grilled steak
Next up was the grilled steak. This came marinated with a side of garlic chips. Old bean said that the steak was juicy and had lots of flavor to it. Can’t go wrong with that.
Grilled fish
Now this was more of my cup of tea. It was a grilled whole fish. The fish had a nice char flavor to it and was definitely flaky.
Assorted nigiri
At last the sushi came! We were both mesmerized when it came to the table. The fish was literally glistening!
This was the extra set we ordered. I’m so glad we got this because we got to try all sorts of seafood. They had tamago, ikura, cucumber, tuna, tuna belly, shrimp, prawn, red tuna, salmon, red snapper, scallop and aburi. This was the most delicious plate of sushi I’ve ever had. My mouth is watering just thinking about it right now.
As expected, every piece of nigiri sushi was fresh and tasted as though it just came from the ocean. I couldn’t get enough of them.
Fish miso soup
Our meal rounded off with a bowl of fish miso soup. You could tell that the fish bones were boiled with it from the depth of flavor that came through. I liked that they had an ample amount of fish in there for you to enjoy too.
At the end, the server will hang the bill at your seat for you to pay when you’re ready.
The before we left, we picked up a few goodies for me to have for lunch the next day. We got some more miso soup, a chawanmushi (steamed egg with seafood), and a sushi box. The sushi was definitely not as good as you would get if you enjoyed your meal at the restaurant. With that being said, they do offer their fresh sashimi at the marketplace so you can get food as fresh as you want it to be. Just don’t expect it from the rolls.
