I went to the Westown Farmer’s Market at Ziedlers Union Square last Wednesday to check out the Sushi-Go food truck. It’s co-owned by Erik Irmiger and Amanda Trenbeth. I asked Erik what’s their most popular dish. He responded with, “Pretty much any of our Sushi Burritos – they make up about 80 percent of our sales. I’ll make you my favorite.”
It turns out, his favorite is the Tunageddon. All of it’s ingredients are packed tightly in a large, darkly colored seaweed wrap. The Tunageddon contains tuna, avocado, cucumbers, green onion, lettuce, rice and tobiko. On the side, you’re given ginger, wasabi and soy sauce.
As I take my first bite, I hear a snap as my teeth puncture the seaweed wrapping. I didn’t know what to expect when I first bit into it because I’ve never tried seaweed wrapped sushi. It didn’t have a major “sea” taste to it, but you could tell it would be the perfect casing for any type of seafood.
“We use fresh Ahi tuna,” says Erik. “We order it as needed and we get it either the day before, or the day of, our scheduled events.” He says that most suppliers deliver to their kitchen, but Empire Fish has been really good at delivering straight to the truck.
The Burritos are huge – I could only finish one half of mine. They’re served wrapped in paper and cut in half alongside the wasabi, ginger and soy sauce. Right away I see the brightly colored pink ahi tuna, which comprised almost two-thirds of the whole wrap. The tuna was soft, moist, and tasted so succulent. It was cut into long, thick strips and was substantially heart and lean.
Also sliced in long strips were the cucumbers. From the texture of it, it seems they used the middle portion of the vegetable, which is softer and juicier than the rest of a cucumber. I could sense the freshness of it and I imagine it was cut shortly before being slipped inside the wrap.
“The prep work is done at the kitchen,” says Erik. “But we make every dish made to order and assemble them here in the truck.”
The thick avocado added to the softness of the burrito. With the ahi tuna being so smooth, and cucumber being so juicy, the avocado simply furthered the texture, contributing to the parallelism within the wrap.
In contrast, the lettuce supplied an enjoyable crunch to the burrito. It had a nice crisp to it and, like all of the other ingredients, tasted very fresh. Normally, sushi dished don’t contain lettuce, but this was a much appreciated change of pace.
“We’re untraditional. We don’t look at what other sushi places are doing and go by that,” says Erik. “We throw the book out the window and produce dishes that we think people will enjoy.”
Also providing a slight crunch was the reddish orange tobiko. Tobiko is the Japanese word for flying fish eggs, a commonly used ingredient in certain types of sushi. The tobiko, as it sat over time, soaked gently into the white rice, giving it some flavor. The soy sauce I dripped over the burrito also gave the rice a bit of extra savor.
The wasabi texture was very smooth and is served at room temperature. I’m used to only being able to put half of a fingernail size amount on my sushi. When I did that, I wanted more. I doubled, maybe tripled the amount and put it on my burrito. It tasted fantastic, but I really wish it was spicier with a more pungent taste.
Perhaps even hotter than the wasabi was the ginger. It had a spice to it that I’ve never tasted on any other shaved ginger before. It was great, I should have asked for more ginger when I got my to-go box for the other half of my wrap.
My only quarrel is that I wish I would have learned how to use chop sticks when I was younger, because as I neared the end of the first half, everything was falling out the other side.
The Sushi-Go food truck opened in May of 2014. By social media and word of mouth, the following year their sales nearly doubled; as the third year approached, their sales continued to grow. Because of the great feedback and the lack of sushi places in Bay View, both Amanda and Erik took on a big project of opening a restaurant.
The restaurant officially opened this past Friday, located at 2110 East Oklahoma, on the corner of Oklahoma and Kinnickinnic, in the Bay View neighborhood.