I think I can say with some certainty that I’ve frequented almost all of Cape Town‘s sushi joints enough to have a fair standard of sushi-judging. I had fallen into a comfortable sushi-rut with the ridiculously well-priced platters at Sevruga and Beluga (at the Waterfront and in Greenpoint, respectively) and the delicious creations of Willoughbys. I thought I knew where all the good sushi was to be had in Cape Town, until I stumbled upon Kyoto Garden Sushi, tucked away on a quiet stretch of Lower Kloofnek Road, only metres away from the throbbing music of Cape Town’s favourite chilled-out bar, Rafikis. Stepping into Kyoto Garden Sushi, I felt like I was transported to a fancy Japanese restaurant in New York or London. The place definitely had an international feel about it, and a chic Japanese-y minimalism that you don’t really see much of in Cape Town’s mass market sushi restaurants. The Zen-like atmosphere (calm Japanese music, bamboo poles adorning the walls, bonsai trees in softly lit alcoves, a mini water feature next to the bathrooms) only added to this.

The menu confirmed the Japanese authenticity, featuring things I’d never eaten, like sea urchin and abalone sushi. While the menu doesn’t have what you’d expect as the full range of Japanese dishes (no teppanyaki, udon or soba), it has a great selection of (sometimes intriguing) dishes. If you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking of going to Kyoto Garden Sushi to have sushi, but don’t miss out on the other dishes on offer: tempura oysters, seafood salads, steamed linefish, sake steamed clams, or a fabulous-sounding saute of tofu, oysters, prawns, octopus and mushrooms.sushi chef game play online We started off our meal with delicious cocktails: the boyfriend had a refreshing mix of whisky, lime, fresh ginger and I had a fruity drink of Japanese melon liqueur, vodka, pineapple and lemon juice. sushi knife online

In a word: yum. As we perused the interesting menu, we were served snacks: salty edamame beans, baby clams, pickled lettuce, fried squid and jellyfish. ‘I didn’t know you could eat jellyfish’ said the boyfriend, as he gingerly poked a piece of it with his chopstick. The thought of eating the rubbery sea creature had never crossed my mind either. But that’s the thing you have to love about Japanese people – they’ll eat anything, even if it it may kill you. sushi rice buy ukYou could never accuse them of unadventurous eating. yo sushi takeaway bathNot ones to be accused of it either, we tried the jellyfish.  sushi new york 1st aveI’m not sure that I would order it willingly, but we loved all the other titbits. where to buy sushi rice in malaysia

It all felt very authentic. For starters, the boyfriend had cold noodles with prawns, and I tried the fried tofu with seaweed, Asian mushrooms and Japanese curry sauce. The tofu was lightly crispy on the outside, and silky on the inside (but not in a gross mushy tofu way), the mushrooms was potently umami-ish, and the curry sauce was fantastic. The boyf’s noodles came in a clean-tasting dressing of soy, mirin and something else that tasted nice.can you cook sushi rice in the microwave We moved onto the highlight of the evening: a chef’s choice sushi platter of sashimi, nigiri and california rolls. I can’t effuse enough praise on the sushi: it was unfaultable. The fish was the freshest I’ve ever had in Cape Town, the rice was perfectly soft and flavoured and even the wasabi paste tasted better than at other sushi restaurants. I could have eaten piles more. I’m not usually a dessert person, but seeing as the rest of the food was so top-notch, I decided I had to try one of their sweets.

We both ended up having the green tea pancake with ginger ice cream – and it lived up to the standard of the other dishes. It was understatedly tasty, and kept to the clean-tasting flavours of the rest of the food, avoiding the sweet cloyingness of most Western desserts. We had a quick chat to the friendly American owner, Scott, who told us that he only uses the freshest ingredients available, like locally-caught line fish and freshly made wasabi, grated from wasabi roots imported from Japan. It’s this attention to freshness that is clearly evident in the dishes and makes Kyoto Garden Sushi stand out from its competitors. Kyoto Garden Sushi is a bit more pricey than your average sushi restaurant, but then it’s definitely not your average sushi restaurant. It’s more a special occasion kind of place (our special occasion was that it was Saturday night and we’d just overcome the previous night’s hangovers) where you go if you want real Japanese food and sushi without mass-market-appeal mayo and sickly sweet sauces.

On a side note, even if you don’t need the loo, do make a trip to the bathroom during your meal. It’s an oasis of calm: flickering candles, trickling water feature and ginger-scented handwash. You could almost be in a teahouse on a Japanese mountain. 11 Lower Kloofnek Road, Tamboerskloof Photo courtesy of Mike SaechangIn order to really understand the development and spread of sushi, you need to remember one thing: modern refrigeration wasn't invented until the 1930s. Before that, people had to find inventive ways of preserving or cooling their food to make it last longer. And that's how sushi began – as a way of preserving fish. Sushi has come a long way since fish was first wrapped in fermenting rice somewhere in Southeast Asia. If you're ready, let's dive into the wonderful and fascinating history of one of the Cape Town Fish Market's best-loved menu options. Way back in the misty past, sushi was invented somewhere in Southeast Asia. Wait, you mean it wasn't invented in Japan?

The modern sushi we eat today is very much Japanese, but it was developed in Japan from earlier forms that came from China in the 7th or 8th century. As a modern sushi eater, you probably wouldn't recognise the ancient Chinese variety of sushi as being sushi, and you definitely wouldn't like the smell. Modern sushi is sufficiently different that it's safe to say it was invented in Japan. Early sushi was invented as a way to preserve fish, the method here being to wrap cured (i.e. salted) fish in fermented rice, as the fermentation going on in the rice was found to preserve the fish even longer. The process took a while as it was designed to preserve the fish for several months. It also did not smell amazing. When you actually ate it, you would peel off and discard the rice and then just eat the fish. So the rice in this case was just packaging, much like early forms of pies in Europe, where the pastry was just used to protect the meat inside and was also discarded when the pie was eaten.

Isn't the history of food fascinating? Fast forward a few hundred years to medieval Japan, and something new gets added to the mix – rice vinegar. The Japanese found that adding rice vinegar to the recipe greatly reduced the time it took the fish to ferment, and allowed the rice to be eaten along with the fish. However, this also did not smell amazing, but according to some sources, still tasted good. At least to a medieval Japanese person. The smell was a bit of an issue and helped drive the development of the process until fermentation was abandoned and only vinegar was used to marinate the sushi. This still took some time, so while sushi could be eaten faster, it was by no means the fast food we know and love today. In the Early Modern period, around 1750, the sheet form of nori seaweed was invented, giving rise to the first forms of rolled sushi, which included various ingredients in addition to the rice. This brings us up to the 19th century, where we find Tokyo native, Hanaya Yoshi (or Yohei), the man generally credited with inventing Tokyo-style sushi and nigiri.

At this time, sushi in Tokyo was being made from fresh fish caught in the nearby Tokyo Bay. But this was still the time before fridges, and spoilage was still an issue, so Hanaya Yoshi either slightly cooked, salted or marinated the fish in vinegar or…drumroll…soy sauce. Today we dip our sushi in soy sauce to add flavour. Back in the day, soy sauce (itself actually made from a fermented bean paste) was used to help preserve fresh fish. Nigiri is also a term a regular sushi-eater might recognise. The term means 'hand-formed' and it refers to a bed of rice, with a piece of fish laid on top of it. This is still a major style of sushi today, but it doesn't mean you'd immediately recognise what old Hanaya Yoshi was cooking up back in the 19th century. In addition to the things he did to preserve the fish, his portions were huge by modern standards, so not exactly bite-size, as with most modern sushi. This was also the period in which sushi stopped becoming slow food and started becoming fast food, with little sushi stalls springing up all over Tokyo.

In the 20th century, the Japanese government cracked down on small sushi stalls because of unsanitary conditions, giving rise to the first generation of proper sushi restaurants. As you might remember, by the middle of the 20th century, large-scale refrigeration was possible thanks to the invention of modern refrigeration technology in the 1930s – and this is where sushi starts going international. Thanks to commercial refrigeration, sushi fish could now be transported all the way from Japan to the West Coast of the United States. While sushi was eaten in certain elite circles in the US and Europe before World War II, it wasn't until the 1960s that America got its first sushi restaurants, beginning in Los Angeles and New York. From there, sushi has exploded onto the world stage as a delicious, healthy meal, and is now eaten across the globe. This, of course, has resulted in lots of experimentation and adaptation as local chefs have taken the sushi concept and invented new forms to cater to local tastes.

One of the best examples of this is the California Roll, which, as its name suggests, was invented in California and replaced the fish component with avocado or cucumber to help introduce sushi to a Western audience. Since then, sushi has been eaten and served in many different ways. For example, the first known sushi conveyor belt only started rolling in 1993 in Australia – which, of course, brings us to Cape Town Fish Market's own place in the 1,800 year history of sushi: In 1997, CTFM was the first restaurant chain to introduce the sushi conveyor belt to South Africa. And we've been serving up delicious sushi made from fresh fish, in both traditional Japanese and Western styles, ever since. Today, Cape Town Fish Market is on the cutting edge of sushi fusion with our Signature Sushi range. Designed to bring together global cuisine in new sushi-style creations, it includes mouth-watering prawn and mango rolls, soy-cured salmon, tuna tartare and our smash-hit fish tacos.