Takumi, Haymarket

Salmon and Avocado Roll

I really hate having to choose somewhere to eat when I'm in the city...... there's just too many choices!!! 

Takumi, in Market City, is one I've only heard of recently (eventhough I've probably walked past it couuntless number of times) and though I'm not usually much of a fan of sushi trains, $2.50 for everything, including some of my favourite Japanese fried goodies sounded much too good to resist!!

Kingfish Gunkan

We're only here for a light meal, as we've had half a meal elsewhere, but there's so many tempting options- it sort of just turned into a bit more than that!


We start of with the salmon and avocado handroll, which is made to order and done so incredibly fast. It's nice, and pretty much what you would expect of a salmon and avocado handroll. The kingfish gunkan was more exciting- a generous serving of kingfish cubes served with a drizzle of terriyaki-like sauce. Unfortunately, the seaweed was rather chewy, which meant that the kingfish cubes quickly fall out as you're effort-fully trying to bite your way through.

Salmon Tobiko Sushi

I was excited to see salmon tobiko sushi- two cute, bitesized little rolls of rice wrapped in a thin piece of salmon, topped with a dash of mayonnaise and tobiko.

The problem with having read some pretty good reviews of restaurants before visiting, as I had with Takumi, is that it did leave me with some expectations. I mean, I wasn't expecting the food here to blow my socks off, but I was a little disappointed that the fish wasn't nearly as fresh as others had made it out to be, or the sushi to be as nice and delicate as I'd hoped. 

Octopus Karaage

But considering that it's priced at $2.50 a dish, the quality wasn't half bad- I did find that I much preferred the fried options over the sushi. We order them from the menu, as there's barely any on the train itself, which is a good thing as we prefer to have our deep fried foods fresh and hot......although this also means that they take a while to come. There's plenty of options on the menu, and though we'd loved to have tried them all, we didn't quite have enough stomach space for it!

Shirauo- Fried White Bait

The octupus karaage is tasty, covered in your typical karaage batter, though we find the octupus to be a little too soft for our liking.We're disappointed with the Shirauo, usually one of our favourite dishes- this version is much more batter than fish and rather bland too.

Salmon Kushiage

We'd ordered the kushiage scallops but were disappointed to find out they'd ran out of scallops for the day, so we opt for salmon kushiage instead. These are basically salmon katsu on sticks, with the salmon being fried with a bread crumb coating, giving it a pleasant crunch. It's served with a cute packet of Tonkatsu sauce, which tasted rather much like barbecue sauce to me, though I prefer eating it as is. We like that it's not too oily, though it's a bit on the heavier side.

Soft Shell Crab

Being one of my favourite fried foods, soft shell crab was the main reason I came here. I was excited to find that the soft shell crab serving was much larger than I'd anticipated. Interestingly, it's covered in a lighter batter than I'd expected, giving it a softer crunch, which goes well with the lightly sweet sauce it comes with. Different, but still a refreshing change to the soft shell crabs I'm used to.  And at $2.50, it's definitely a bargain I'll be coming back for!!