Get your sushi straight from the truck

plus an update on where i've been

Hi, everyone!

Hope you’re all doing well. My life, unfortunately, has been a little unpredictable. Davida did a wonderful thing and explained the situation to readers of my other newsletter, but basically, last year I was diagnosed with a rare eye condition called Coat’s disease.

In the past few weeks, I started experiencing a lot of unusual eye pain, and eventually had to undergo emergency laser surgery to alleviate some alarming pressure buildup. Soon after my recovery, the pain returned, and I learned that the surgery may have failed, which apparently isn’t an uncommon occurrence. I’m working with my doctors to figure out what’s next.

As you can imagine, I’m stressed, scared, occasionally in pain, and on a bunch of weird medications, one of which messes with my sense of taste (it makes carbonated beverages taste like actual poison). All of these things have tanked my appetite, which is the worst specific thing that could happen to a fucking food writer. But hey, the next time my primary care physician checks on my weight, she might commend me on shedding the pounds I promised I would.

That means you might not hear from me regularly for a bit until we get this situation sorted out. Thank you for being patient with me, and thanks for all the messages many of you have sent me after seeing my mopey social media posts about it.

All this being said, I do have one restaurant in the hopper that I’ve wanted to share with you. It’s one that has brought me unexpected joy when I was least ready to accept it, and so: Have any of you been to a rotary sushi restaurant before?!

Because if you haven’t, you should really visit Sushi Plus Rotary Sushi Bar.

There’s three locations, one in Boystown, Chinatown, and in the Aurora area.

I visited the one in Boystown; it’s near the intersection of Belmont and Broadway. I just so happened to be out catching up on errands a few days after my emergency surgery.

Since I was still popping Tylenol and hurting pretty good, I figured I might as well treat myself to something I was hoping to find a little enjoyable, even if the concept of food in felt unappealing to me.

But man, I was not prepared for that sensory assault after I first poked my head in.

One of my eyes might be going blind, but my other one’s just fine, because holy shit, I practically drowned in all that color. The place is extremely well lit, there’s food dancing around on a conveyor belt, music playing over the speakers, and it was busy as shit in the middle of the afternoon.

Single diners are seated at individual seats facing the sushi conveyor belt while parties of two or more get to sit in a booth.

A server start you off by offering you a warm hand towel and asking if you want something to drink other than water, but most of your interaction will either be with the plates of sushi rotating by your face or with the handy tablet situated on every table.

Everything that’s on the conveyor belt can be ordered via the tablet, meaning if you don’t see what you want, you can just request it with the press of a button. But there’s a lot of additional stuff on the tablet menu that’s not on the conveyor belt, such as fried and grilled dishes, salads, and soups.

If you order anything via the tablet (and you should!), the dish will be delivered to you from the kitchen via one of the trucks that run on top of the rotary conveyor belt.

When my first dish arrived this way I almost slapped my cheeks and started screaming, but I was by myself, and I’m sure my post-surgery melon would not have enjoyed that very much.

Don’t worry, I eventually dragged Davida along for a trip, who at first was not interested whatsoever—until she stepped foot inside the place and a childlike grin crept across her face. (She ended up having a great time.)

One of the things I’m happy to report is on the hot food menu is hamachi kama ($13), which is grilled yellowtail collar.

This is the portion of fish that’s located past the gills, but just before the head, and it’s fucking delicious. You scoop the oily and juicy meat out of the bony parts with your chopsticks (which takes a little bit of skill), and you can munch on the crisp skin as you go along. Based off the fat content, skin, and the bit of work involved with eating it, I’d kind of liken hamachi collar to a chicken wing.

$13 is a pretty good price, in my opinion, and the portion size is surprisingly generous. I’ll be getting another one the next time I need cheering up.

Davida was a fan of the takoyaki (ball-shaped octopus pancakes; $6), which in this case are deep-fried to a crisp on the outside, but still remain soft on the interior. And the whole fried soft shell crab is only $9, comes to you screaming hot, and is fun to eat.

And, of course, there’s the rotary sushi.

All you do is examine what looks good to you, pluck it right off the belt, and get to eating. Plates are priced by color, so a white plate will cost you $2.90, yellow $3.90, blue $4.50, green $5.20, red $5.90, and the most expensive is purple, at $6.90.

At the end of your meal, your eagle-eyed server will simply tally up which color plates you have stacked up and charge you accordingly. Anything you already ordered from the tablet will be tacked on your bill.

We rarely went for any of the novelty maki, many of which were sauced to all hell or filled with cream cheese and various mayo-dressed seafood salads.

One type even had Flamin’ Hot Cheetos on top, heh. If that’s your jam, go nuts, there’s seemingly a million varieties of silly maki variations for you to revel in.

That’s not to say we’re didn’t go for any—the sakura nigiri ($5.20 for two), which is a ball of sushi rice wrapped in raw salmon and topped with a ton of crab salad was entertaining and rich. And Davida and I enjoyed the garlic steak nigiri ($5.20 for two) way more than we expected we would.

If you’re worried you’ll reach and grab something you don’t like, you can hedge your bets by reading the description card that precedes each type of sushi on the conveyor belt.

The prices at Sushi Plus are really fair for what you get, too.

A four-piece plate of perfectly decent raw scallops is $6.90, as is a four-piece salmon, hamachi, and escolar, and though you’re not getting the finest specimens flown in from Hokkaido or Scotland daily, that just means you can eat like, three times as much as you normally would, right?

Seriously, this is like the best kind of instant gratification.

It’s even better when the plate of fatty salmon belly nigiri with spicy mayo, and red onions on top is better than it should be, especially for just over $5. I mean, is the rice here incredible? No. Should you expect it to be? Also, no. Some of the food comes to you on a truck that looks like a knock-off Optimus Prime and talks to you, and that’s fucking awesome.

And $5.90 for a really generous portion of ikura (salmon roe) is nothing to complain about, either.

Just a fair warning if you’re going to order the ama ebi, or raw shrimp ($11) from the tablet, however.

This one just takes a while to show up, so order it 10 to 15 minutes before you’re going to want it. I’m assuming it’s because deep-frying the shrimp heads takes quite a bit of time, and if they’re shelling these things on the spot, I have a feeling the process is a little tedious, since the raw flesh is so delicate. (Also, yes, you’re supposed to eat the entire heads, legs, eyes, antennae and all, they’re delicious.)

I don’t think it’s a dangerous guess to assume some of the dessert at Sushi Plus is purchased from elsewhere.

That’s because some signs proudly display the fact that the cheesecake on the conveyor belt comes from The Cheesecake Factory. The slice of green tea crepe cake ($5.20) that Davida grabbed off the rotary system was so uniformly constructed that I’m going to guess that it wasn’t made in-house either. We did see some varieties of pudding that were labeled as homemade, however.

We happily enjoyed our green tea crepe cake; it wasn’t too sweet, and was a good excuse to stay just a few minutes longer to watch the merry-go-round of sushi slowly drift by our heads.

I did flag the manager down to ask her the question I’m sure many of you would have upon visiting any rotary sushi bar, and it’s if there’s a system in place to take food off the belt if it’s been out for too long.

She assured me that nothing is out past 45 minutes (some experts say two hours is the max safe time it can be out at room temp), and there’s a subtle marking system involved for the kitchen crew to monitor. The conveyor belt moves through the kitchen, and if the timer’s up on anything, it’s swiftly removed and replaced. It’s a fascinating operation.

I know there’s probably a few of you who aren’t convinced a cartoonish rotary sushi bar is worth going to, but man, I’m not sure there’s anything I needed more right then. Sometimes we need someone to make a plane noise and swoop the food down to your face to encourage you to smile and eat. In this case, I guess I needed a truck with bright red flames painted on its sides delivering me raw fish and a grilled hamachi collar, way more than I knew. And it was wonderful seeing Davida laugh too.

Sushi Plus Rotary Sushi Bar
Multiple locations
Hours vary by location

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Thank you, everyone, for being patient with my eye issues. I’m sorry about being out of touch for so long, but I’m not sure how long this is going to go on, so don’t be surprised if these dispatches come sporadically for a bit.

If you’ve enjoyed today’s edition of The Party Cut, please share it, because I’m sure there’s someone you know who’s curious about how a rotary sushi place works (so much fun):

And of course, I won’t be annoying about this today, but I could use your support in keeping up the newsletter.

It’ll unlock all the previous paid content, so if you’ve been here for a while and want to double up on what you’ve read so far, you can catch up while I deal with my bum eye. Otherwise, you know the drill—every other edition is always behind the paywall just to cover newsletter expenses.

Okay, everyone. I’ve missed you and I love you very much.