Senmi Sushi

3.5
Decent sushi restaurant located inside the Emporium Shokuhin market! Japanese sushi restaurants in Singapore are either decently priced and so low in quality that you’d rather not eat it, or super expensive and awesome. except that the super expensive restaurants import the fish directly from Japan (and proudly boast about it) which D and I freak out and avoid at all costs… so we’ve been looking for decent sushi places to eat on a normal day out.
and Senmi sushi satisfies just that. Senmi sushi is not cheap, yet not so expensive, at around $ 19 each for chirashi and rolls– and the sushi is fresh and delicious. the restaurant ambiance is clean and inviting, being that it’s located inside a recently opened new market. We got the seared salmon roll and the regular Chirashi bowl, which was fitting for two but Chirashi bowl was a bit on the smaller side. There’s a chirashi bowl for 2~3 pax @ $ 35 option which we heard was great, will try next time!

Simple, fresh sushi place. The sashimi is great.
Being Singapore, the prices are ridiculous… (On that note, the rolls look good value for money, though have not tried any of them so can’t speak to how they are). The venue is simple, casual, exactly as you would expect from a place that is attached to a supermarket! Likely to be back, for a casual lunch.

This sushi joint is part of Emporium Shokuhin, a new gourmet supermarket with 7 restaurants, a takeaway sushi section and a very hyped up bunch of seafood tanks and steak room. My colleagues and I were pretty darn excited about a Japanese market opening near our office, since the Suntec/​Millenia/​Marina Sq area is pretty much the dead zone for value (read value, not affordable, since that doesn’t exist in the vicinity) meals for lunch. Unfortunately, we got a little too excited and were brought down to earth quickly at our visit to the sushi bar last week.
Senmi Sushi IS located in a supermarket and high end as it may be, I do expect *some* value. We ordered the chirashi and wagyu beef roll, which are the specialties and I thought the former was mediocre. The chirashi came with fairly standard fish, portions that left us wondering where we should get some mee pok afterwards, and at a price tag that was a little lofty. I didn’t mind the lack of variety as much as I minded the portions because honey, there ain’t nothing worse than under-​feeding a hungry office worker with only an hour to spare. The beef roll scored way better on the value card, with some delicious slices of beef wrapped around a shrimp tempura roll and covered in some mystery sauce with crunchy crumbs. Again at about $ 18 (if I recall correctly), you were getting what you paid for. My advice is to stick with Teppei at Millennia Walk, where you get a humongous bowl of Kaisendon for about $ 17 and they creatively offer a salad option if you’re on a no-​carb diet. There’s also a restaurant in Purvis St that does a very generous $ 25 bowl but I find the slices too thick and jelat.
Besides the food, I liked the décor (a calming zen aesthetic) but that was about it. We came during their opening week so the front of house was really disorganized. The restaurant has a long sushi bar and a row of tables that were, well, long. Since most office folk eat in 2’s, every table had enough space for 2 – 4 more people but was underutilized, so there was a long line of people watching empty table space. We were initially seated at the sushi bar, which has iPad’s for every 2 people. However, the waiter thought it was necessary to consolidate our order on one iPad and turned the other one off, so we all had to take turns moving to the seat with the glorious functioning iPad to place our orders. The face –palm-​worth use of technology was made worse by the fact that every iPad (at the counter and tables) was connected to a cable on the wall that was about 15 cm long. So be warned, you’re gonna get really chummy with your colleagues while trying to peruse the menu and order at this sushi joint. Lastly, our orders (which if you notice was mostly raw) took almost an hour to get to us and it was only after we asked about them that they magically appeared within seconds.
Not a fun opening week experience but if you’re desperate (and you probably are) for a change of scene with sushi, this is it. Just uh, save a couple of bucks for mee pok afterwards because you will be hungry. Or just eat the takeaway sushi in the emporium itself.