Clean Eating

I rarely feel bad or guilty if I over-eat sushi. It’s such a clean food and I know it’s healthy–even if I indulge once in awhile. Fatty fish is a good thing that the body needs.

Michael had some friends visiting Portland this week and they wanted to go out for sushi last night. They live in Utah and apparently good sushi is few and far between in Utah. We took them to the best sushi restaurant in Portland: Masu.

Masu is a personal favorite with a lot of happy memories for me. The first time I went there, Michael took me to Masu to celebrate getting my new job (a few years ago now). It was astounding sushi! We’ve been a few more times with friends and family visiting Portland and I’ve never had a bad experience.

Masu is in the Pearl District–yuppyville in downtown Portland. It’s upstairs in a warehouse-like loft.

Masu

There’s a sushi bar and a regular bar, and then a fair amount of table seating. There was a new mural on the wall and I remarked that it was very “Portland.” I couldn’t get a better picture, but it’s a mural with a woman giving a big burly guy a tattoo of a shrimp. Too funny!

We were seated and ordered drinks. I got Jesses’ Girl – a VERY strong Martini!

Drink Menu

Martini

Boy was it strong! I only had one. Partly because I didn’t feel like drinking much last night, and also because the drink was so incredibly strong.

I drank a lot of the cucumber water they brought to the table.

The sushi menu is pretty impressive. The specialty rolls are really where the restaurant shines. I had another sip of my awesome beverage:

Another Sip

The waiter brought the edamame to snack on.

Appetizer

We put our orders in and anxiously awaited delicious food.

Our guests ordered a cucumber and octopus salad. I ate the cucumber part only.

Salad

First was a specialty roll: Death By Sushi. It’s my favorite of their rolls.

Death by Sushi

So yummy! I could eat that dish every night. Next was The Lotus specialty roll.  Tuna, crab, avocado tempura fried with hana and eel sauce. I usually don’t get tempura but it was tasty!

Lotus Roll

Toro (or O-Toro) sushi is a delicacy. It’s the fattiest portion of the tuna and it melts in your mouth like butter. It’s the underbelly of the fish and it’s apparently very hard to find. Which means it’s also VERY expensive. I had never heard of it before and last night was the first time I tried it.

Toro

I won’t say how much the Toro sushi was, but two orders of it was a SHOCKING amount when the bill came. Yikes! We got a bunch of other standard rolls. I don’t really remember what they were and a few weren’t my favorites so I didn’t eat them. I wanted to save room for my favorite roll. I did enjoy the spicy scallop roll.

Finally, my favorite roll came: the Philly. What’s better than cream cheese??

Philly Roll

I was STUFFED.

Finished

I went home very full, very happy, and went to sleep immediately! The food was so good. 🙂 I even woke up this morning not very hungry. I went over my calories last night by about 300 or so calories. I’m not too worried because like I said, sushi is good food and the 90/10 Rule applies! 🙂 I did wake up this morning with a headache and a bit of a hangover. Weird! After only 1 drink?

QUESTION: Do you like sushi? What’s your favorite thing to order?