CityLife

Samsi

Samsi
(Whitworth Street)
City centre
May 2010

Cuisine: Sushi
Lunchtime luxury sushi buffet: £15 per person

Overall: 2/5
Decor: 2/5, Service: 2/5, Food: 2/5

There's an old Japanese proverb I like to roll off the tongue every now and again: “Keizoku wa chikara nari”. OK, so in English it translates to: “Continuance is strength”.

It’s a mantra I like to think represents my personal relationship with sushi – the masterpiece of Japanese cuisine – on my regular trips to feed on the raw fishy stuff.

With the proliferation of sushi joints popping up in recent years, and largely thanks to Yo! Sushi’s genius conveyor belt system, we Brits now have quite a love affair with cold, wet fish. 

And with that conveyor belt system brings one of those new modern etiquette posers as to exactly how many plates it’s polite to scoff without appearing too greedy.

Often has been the time when I’ve sat with my fellow sushi-obsessed buddy pondering exactly how many plates is too many plates at Yo!

We reckon seven is the upper limit – although we were informed on one occasion at the establishment that the record had been 40 plates by one gent in one sitting.

Impressive.  Continuance is definitely strength in the sushi-eating kingdom.

Which brings us along to me and my sushi buddy’s visit to the New Samsi, or, as we think it’s now called, Samsi, but more on that one later.

The Samsi empire has been going for 15 years now, starting out as the New Samsi restaurant on Whitworth Street, set up by Cheshire-based entrepreneur Samantha Gore-Lyons.  It now has five restaurants, as well as a busy food exporting business.

It’s won awards and it’s been hailed as serving the best Japanese food in the north west.

Heck, Duncan Bannatyne even said he’s such a fan of the venue (his gym is next door on Whitworth Street) he’d be willing to invest in the place when owner Samantha went on TV show Dragon’s Den to pitch another of her business ideas.

But how will Samsi’s sushi compare, now we have such a wealth of Japanese offerings across the city?

As we take our seats on a Wednesday lunchtime it’s fairly quiet.

The Japanese-style décor is, I’m afraid to say, now looking a little tired, with the predictable bamboo screens, red paper lanterns and drooping orchids on the dated pale pine furniture.

But hey, we’re here to munch sushi, so we’re prepared to be wowed by the food awaiting us. 

And as I know the restaurant serves up ‘luxury sushi buffets’, I’m girding my loins for a full on fish-fest. Continuance is strength, remember.

But as we leaf the menu, I’m troubled.

Not once, but twice in the menu there is a tersely-worded memo, with stark typed letters urging us ‘DO NOT ORDER MORE SUSHI THAN YOU CAN EAT’ in the menu as ‘THAT WILL PUT THE PRICES UP’.

“Pah!” I boldly declare.  “I will order the luxury sushi buffet and order as much as I like”.

Oh, but then the confusion really starts.

Our waiter, bless him, explains he’s only just started working there.  When we request the luxury sushi buffet off the main menu (£16.95) he looks confused and runs for help.

He returns to tell us we can’t order that because ‘the chef isn’t in’, and suggests we order the lunchtime sushi buffet (£15) instead.

Now I’m really confused.  “If the chef isn’t in, who’s going to be preparing the sushi for a lunchtime buffet?” I quite legitimately enquire.

Our waiter rushes off again to check if we can have it, and returns to say ‘yes’, a regular buffet is fine.

It is billed on the menu as ‘luxury all you can eat sushi, norimaki and sashimi’, at £15 per person, with a minimum of two dining. As it’s lunchtime, we decide to order just a single glass of white wine each – sushi bud goes for the Spanish Raffie Aires Sauvignon Blanc dry for £3.35, while I opt for the Santa Serea Sauvignon Blanc Chardonnay for a reasonable £3.50.

Well, I say reasonable until I actually taste the stuff.  I order some fizzy water to mask the taste. Then I see our sushi hover towards us.

It’s nicely presented in two huge round wooden bowls, and there looks to be a good selection of basic sushi fare.  There’s some cucumber and salmon maki, salmon, tamago, eel and prawn nigiri as well as a small selection of assorted sashimi.

We’re not entirely sure where the luxury part of the buffet comes in though. We tuck into the rolls, but I’m struck only by the mostly bland, and a little flabby, taste of it all.

Now, we are two people who really love our food, and really, really love our sushi.  Basically, food makes us happy.  But I’m afraid Samsi didn’t make us happy.

My sushi buddy is beginning to look mighty miffed I’ve brought her here at all.

We recall old times hanging out at the short-lived Ithaca, where, for all its glittery-walled foibles over on John Dalton Street, they at least really knew how to lay on a luxury sushi-piled platter.

I try to win round my bud by stating that reality star Kerry Katona was here at Samsi only last month, learning to make sushi for herself with the help of the chefs. 

So we sit, staring into the abyss of our circular bowls, wondering what happens next.  Will more platters of fishy stuff be brought to us?  Will we be able to choose any particular favourites rather than the same again? 

Will we get our knuckles wrapped for leaving an unagi nigiri and told we’ve HELPED PUT THE PRICES UP?

We have to seek some sort of clarification.  A different waitress heads to our table to take our plates away and I seize the moment to ask, exactly, how much more sushi we are entitled to.

And well, erm, we’re still not sure at the end of it.  The menu suggests you can have up to a maximum of 40 pieces, and the waitress says we can have another plate if we really want, eyeing our bulging bellies suspiciously.

“Oh no, we’re fine,” we trill, and decide to quit while we’re ahead.

Even the name of the restaurant is puzzling us as we leave – the banner still reads ‘New Samsi’ but the till receipt and lower banners have become ‘Samsi’.

The waitress informs us that now all the restaurants in the business are branded Samsi.

Our sushi experience here is probably best summed up by another of my favourite sayings from my big book of Japanese pearls of wisdom: “Akinasu wa yome ni ku wasuna”.

That translates as: “Don’t let your daughter-in-law eat your autumn eggplants.” 

Confused?  Exactly...

Samsi, 36-38 Whitworth Street, Manchester, M1 3NR (0161 279 0022, www.samsi.co.uk).

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