My Amaebi Therapy

It is still a mystery to me, why the sushi belts in Hong Kong is always so full. You can always see faithful pilgrims queuing up at their doors, regardless of hours or seasons. For me, it is the enjoyment of watching many nicely arranged dishes flowing by, letting them entice my palates.

watching preys go by

One dish that never fails is ‘amaebi’, a.k.a. those cute little sweet shrimps! From literal translation, ‘ama’ in Japanese means ‘sweet’, while ‘ebi’ refers to ‘shrimp’. Although simple, this dish is not to be overlooked. At the very least, the sweet, creamy and highly elevated shrimp taste is a natural addiction…

amaebi x 5

The shrimps are typically from North of Japan like Hokkaido, and it is very critical to keep the small delicate creatures fresh to the moment of savoring in raw. You can pretty much tell the freshness of a shrimp by the color of its tail, firmness of the meat, and of course by a simple sniff too. To eat, my personal ‘etiquette’ is to dab some soy sauce and wasabi on the body (if possible, a sprinkle of lemon zest before that), then pick up the shrimp with chopsticks by its tail, and take the body in with a single, pleasurable bite.

Sometimes I do go further to suck the head for the strangely delectable jelly inside – when I’m not on a date, perhaps.