Spice Quest has a Japanese (sit on the floor) dining area where you can have sushi. The problem with the sushi here was: 1. you had to make a reservation at least one day in advance so that the chef could make sure he had the ingredients to make sushi, 2. there was no set menu so you were getting whatever the chef was able to find, 3. you had to have at least 4 people in your group to be able to go (but I did see couples there at times so this may not be enforced), and it was an entire meal -- $30 for miso soup, seaweed salad, sashimi, sushi, tempura and a dessert. Not a bad deal at all and the food was always yummy.
Sushi Ya is the first sushi restaurant to open in Suriname. When it first opened, I believe I went and had sushi at least once a week for the first six months. The sushi was good, the miso soup was good, the seaweed salad was good, the sashimi was good.... everything was good. As with most restaurants in Suriname though, the quality of the food has not remained the same. For the past few months, the food has been so so.... the tuna tasted fishy (never a good sign), the edamame was old (it looked dried out and wrinkled), the usually delicious baby back ribs had a completely different flavor and one of our party ended up with diarrhea....
I'm not sure if this was a one-off incident -- perhaps the chef was sick at home or the usual shipments didn't come in or something along those lines. Generally speaking, the food here is good. The salmon sashimi is delicious -- pure, non fishy, firm and fresh tasting. The bbq salmon hand roll is my favorite -- satisfying ration of rice to fish to seaweed. The soft shell crab roll is also very good, as are many of the unagi rolls. Even the non-sushi dishes are good, the teriyaki chicken and the baby back ribs are excellent. The miso soup is good -- the Thai coconut soup is not (don't bother with it). The tempura is relatively good, and the desserts are tasty (although a bit too expensive).
So, I'm hoping that Sushi Ya will pull through and keep it together.
Unsei Yaki started as primarily a teppanyaki restaurant but they have now expanded with a dedicated sushi eating area. The sushi eating area is cute -- you get slippers and sit on the floor. There is one table which has open space under the table for your legs so you don't need to fold up on the floor. I found the whole sushi eating area uncomfortable -- the slippers are cloth and immediate questions of "what if the person wearing these before me had some sort of food fungus" came up. The table with the space underneath is soooo wobbly that you should not at any point actually lean on the table (this made sitting down and getting up a bit harder), and finally sometimes you don't want to sit on the floor -- if this is the case there are some tables on the other side of the building where you can sit.
Unsei Yaki has a larger collection of sushi options than Sushi Ya. The menus are strange laminated cards that are stuck together -- you fold them open like a fan and then have to turn them over to check out front and back. A lot of the sushi rolls have cooked food in them, a lot with cream cheese and/or mayo and some more unusual rolls. The sushi is okay, the dragon roll is good and I like the inclusion of mango in many of the rolls. There is no miso soup and frequently no edamame. Overall the sushi is reasonably okay to good.
The Ramada Inn Princess Hotel (across from Tangelo next to Torarica) also has a teppanyaki/ sushi restaurant. I've only gone once and I was disappointed. The variety of sushi offered was very limited and the sushi was okay. I don't even remembered what I ordered -- which shows how mundane it was. I do remember that the sushi pieces were so huge that I had a hard time eating the pieces in one bite. As you know, you can't eat sushi in two bites -- the whole thing falls apart - which it did.
There weren't many other choices on the menu either -- the focus of this restaurant appears to primarily be their teppanyaki. I didn't try any of the other food so I'm not sure whether having a limited menu means that the items available are excellent (as it sometimes does when once focuses on fewer items done well instead of a lot of options all so so).
So -- this was brief recap of sushi in Suriname. Sushi Ya, Unsei Yaki and Ogi (the restaurant at the Ramada Inn) all have FB pages where you can check out the menus.
Happy eating... :)
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