At Maki-San, you can design your own sushi roll or salad, choosing from more than 80 ingredients. And if you’re too lazy to design your own, you can just order the  signature rolls or salads.

You take a form at the counter, sit by the side to craft your sushi or salad, and then pass the form back to the counter. The staff will roll your sushi and when the staff calls your number, you collect your food.

First, pick the size: little san ($6.90) or mega san ($9.90). Then pick the wrap (seaweed or soy wrap) and the rice (white or brown) and finally pick your ingredients.

We designed this ourselves!

Keep On Shrimpin’ ($9.90) – Unrolled

Keep On Shrimpin’ ($9.90) – Rolled

My friend and I tried a signature sushi roll, Keep On Shrimpin’, with tempura prawn, mixed greens and wasabi mayo sauce in a soy sesame wrap.

We also designed a roll of our own by going in turns to pick one ingredient each: he picked one ingredient and I picked one, and his turn and my turn, etc. Our roll ended up with seaweed wrap, brown rice, tamago (egg), roasted mushroom, avocado, steamed prawn, tobiko (roe), salmon sashimi, tempura crunch, and spicy mayo.

A Thing For Tempura ($11.90)

The process for ordering the salad is the same: you pick a size (little san $7.90, big san $9.90, mega san $11.90) and pick your ingredients, which are the same ingredient choices as the sushi rolls.

Like our sushi roll, we picked a ready-made option and designed one on our own. We should have gone for the popular signature salad, What’s Your Beef? ($9.90), with Thai roast beef in sweet thai chilli sauce, fried onions, cucumbers, roasted tomatoes and pine nuts. But since my eating partner LOVES fried food, we had A Thing For Tempura, with mixed tempura in a sea of greens.

For both the sushi rolls and the salads, we preferred our designs to the signatures probably because we know and picked the food we like and because it’s more fun to design our own.

Is there ever a bad combination? One-half of the owners, Joseph, said that it is very rare to get a bad combination. But if you need a tip on how to create good food: always have contrasting flavors and textures. For instance, avocado will go well with tempura crunch because one is sweet, creamy and soft while the other is crispy and salty. If you pick a musky mushroom, the contrast will be something light and bright.

When we were there, the crowd was young or angmohs or the adventurous demographics. But we would highly recommend it to anyone who goes to The Cathay where there’s a dearth of good food. Overall, the food was yummy and we had lots of fun at this shop. This shop is worth a revisit.

Maki-San

2 Handy Road
The Cathay #B1-17/18
Singapore 229 233
T: 6737 8772
Website
Rating: 3.388/5 stars

PS: Thanks Omar and Joseph for the invite.

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Voucher Giveaway

Maki-San is giving 2 maki-lucki vouchers to 5 readers each. A voucher entitles you to a little-san sushi roll till end of Nov 2012.

Triple your chances to win the tickets by doing all three options:

1.  Share the link on facebook (showing “via Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow.” Remember to set your privacy setting to “PUBLIC” so that we know who shares it.)

2. Retweet.

3. Answer this question on the blog: Which building and level is Maki-San located?

Contest ends 9 Nov, Fri, 2359hr. Only to addresses in Singapore. Good luck!

We have picked the winners and they are: Kristel Chua, Foodie FC, Mabel Lee, Roger Cheng and Missy Essy. Congrats.