Since our favourite Chinese restaurant, Dynasty, closed and another which has no attraction for us opened in its place, we have been trying out different restaurants for our essential monthly dose of sushi. This restaurant is at the beginning of Main Road, Sea Point and its name seems to be the large signage above its door. But, if you look at the menu and the small sign on the left, it is called the Empire Asian Restaurant
And to try three of the Chef's Specials, we also, greedily, ordered Special No.4 at R109. It was a lot of sushi but, over an hour and a half, we did manage to do it justice. Two of the chef's specials - the Crunch Roll (in the middle) and the Tiger roll on the left, have a core of salmon which has been battered and then deep fried. Interesting. We liked the texture but not sure we would repeat the experiment again with the Crunch roll. The dark sauce on the Hot Smoked is a sweet soy. The Tiger roll, topped with tempura prawns, is a definite for a reappearance; it’s doused in a sweet chilli mayo and is delicious. So modern and so not traditional. But we liked it
We took along a bottle of wine which we thought might go well with sushi - and it did
Made by Roger Burton at Constantia Royale, it is their 2018 Sauvignon blanc, which also contains 17% Semillon. Corkage is R30
The menu consists mostly of special platters at very good prices
These looked worth trying as well
It was rather difficult to make up our mind and not get too many duplicates
This is the Salmon special H for R129. The sushi is freshly made, with good rice that separates
And the tuna and salmon seemed very fresh, as were the prawns on the sashimi
The restaurant interior is white and clean and reminds us of the way Dynasty used to look
And our waitress looked after us very well. We shall return
All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus
