Saburo's Let Down

So, yesterday was the planned trip to Saburo's, a sushi restaurant in Portland. We've been planning on going there for a while now and we were pretty hyped up about it. I first learned of the place a couple of months ago, searching online for good sushi places in Portland and found out that Saburo's was a local favorite for giving very generous portions and having it be both fresh and cheap. As a student on a budget, that's something I definitely like so I put it aside as a place I would like to go.

It was only after I did a bit more searching online about the place that I started becoming a bit obsessed about it. I heard their sushi was huge but I hadn't realized how much so until I saw pics of their food. My god, it was beautiful. The nigiri were easily twice or three times as big as normal with the maki as thick as my arm. And all at the regular price of the normal sized ones at regular sushi restaurants! How awesome is that? True sushi purists might think this is wrong as sushi is meant to be eaten in one bite but this is one time where quantity and quality go hand in hand and I'm more than receptive to large pieces of sushi at a very reasonable price.

I introduced Saburo's to Diana and she became similarly interested and we picked a day to go. We were all hyped up for our trip to Portland to go and have Saburo's. Kent didn't come with us but he left us instructions to get him some shrimp tempura rolls and some ebi nigiri and David, Diana's boyfriend came along for the trip. We drive down there, all ready to wait in a long line with our Nintendo DS's for however long we needed to. We had heard that they're so popular that there's generally a long wait of at least half an hour and sometimes over an hour just to get a seat so we were prepared.

And what happened when we got there? I spotted it first and when I noticed that there was nobody waiting in line, I knew something was wrong. It was closed! Saburo's was closed! A drive by confirmed it and a sign on the door proclaimed they were on summer vacation! What the hell? Summer vacation?! And they couldn't put up a little notice online on their website! So not cool. We were pretty disappointed and sad about it because for one thing, we drove an hour just to go and try this place. :( Next time we're so calling to make sure they're open. We didn't this time because who would have thought they would go on vacation? I certainly didn't and since their website said nothing about being closed for an extended amount of time, I didn't even think of it. *sigh*

In the end, we still wanted sushi so we decided to go to Sushiland instead for some kaiten sushi. We went to the Clackamas one and have been going there for a while now. The great thing about kaiten sushi is that you can basically take whatever you like on the conveyor belt. The belt alone is novelty enough to go there and they have relatively fresh fish for a decent price. Each plate is color coded for the amount that it costs and at the end all the plates are added up for our total cost.

One of our favorites this time was the amberjack, something we typically don't get. It was one of the specials and the light color of it intrigued me so I thought, what the hell. It had a very delicate flavor and I ended up liking it a lot so I'll probably get it again. We ordered all our favorites like unagi, maguro and salmon (Diana has a thing against it but I love the stuff and the ones at Sushiland has some awesome color) as well as spicy tuna.

Towards the end, we decided to each pick something that was different and not something we would normally choose for ourselves for another person. Diana ended up picking a spider roll for me, not typically my thing but it was okay. The avocado had gone dark so I wasn't too keen on it. David ended up picking scallop nigiri for Diana, something she really wasn't looking forward to since she wasn't a big scallop eater at all. And it looked odd. In the end, she squirted the lemon on it to hopefully mask the taste of it and while she wasn't sold on it, she decided that it wasn't that horrible. Me and David split the other one and agreed that it was different. It's doubtful that that would make it back for a repeat performance in the future. And lastly, I picked amaebi for David. I've never had the stuff before and neither had he but he seemed to enjoy it. It was too bad that they don't do the whole, deep fry the heads and give it to you to eat thing because that would have been pretty cool too. Oh well.

In the end, we managed to spend $52 for three people and that was including two orders of shrimp tempura rolls and two orders of ebi nigiri to take back home for Kent so it wasn't that bad at all. And Kent absolutely adored the shrimp tempura rolls. I think he'll probably ask us to bring back only them for him next time. And all three of us were absolutely stuffed from the sushi feast we had.

We were understandably disappointed because we didn't get to try Saburo's (David and Diana have taken to calling the place Subaru because they had the audacity to close on us *rolls eyes*) but we've decided to try it again later. We want those big sushi! Even as a novelty, we want to try it at least once. I'm hoping this stupid vacation of theirs ends soon and we'll get that chance in the immediate future. But in the meantime, at least my sushi craving as been satisfied. For now anyway.