Houghton now has its very own sushi restaurant, and it’s simply great! Sky Sushi opened up at 401 Sheldon Avenue, across Swift’s True Value, with a soft opening on Sept. 29, with the first ten customers dining for free. The opening special had a $20-per-person buffet with all the varieties available for dine-in and take-out and had their hard opening the day after, which resulted in extensive propitious reviews.
The owners of this place, Justin Li and Curly Zhang, are brilliant with their cuisine and people love it! Curly is an alumnus of Michigan Tech and graduated in 2015. Talking about her idea of opening a sushi restaurant, “Well, Houghton never really did have a decent sushi restaurant and after I completed my studies, my friends at Tech suggested that this place could really work well.” Curly and Justin are also co-owners of another outlet in Chicago and generally travel to and fro between weeks. The staff is welcoming, friendly and very well-versed with all the waitressing idiosyncrasies. The place has a perfect ambiance, setting the mood as a hip dating place for all the lovers of Japanese viands.
There is an endless list of varieties for all the dishes. The favorites include Tonkotsu ramen which is made from Japanese noodles, poke, soft boiled eggs, bamboo shoots and graced with green onions, mushrooms and bean sprouts. Big plate combos are typically most requested, amongst which the sushi deluxe combo has excellent reviews especially about its delicious Dragon Maki. Other varieties of maki include the Sky Maki, which is the speciality of the house prepared with tempura shrimp, spicy tuna and crab meat with generous quantities of avocado and eel sauce and embellished with deep fried onion pieces. The Houghton snow which consists of tamago, smoked salmon with seared super white wasabi sauce; and the Flaming Dragon which is the luscious combination of hot spicy mayonnaise, red and black tobiki and scallion.
The house serves great soups, sake and nigiri. The innumerable varieties of sashimi include Maguro (tuna), Hamachi( yellow tai), Kani( crab sticker) and Ikura( salmon egg) which are the most sought after meals. When asked about the difference between nigiri and sashimi, Curly explained that nigiri is basically served with sake and fish on the top unlike sashimi which also comes with a rice serving. “My favorite is the Spider Maki, which is made from soft shelled crab, avocado, cucumbers and spiced just a little bit with oshinko and soy sauce and I have it with Miso soup, Justin’s favorite, the seaweed salad and Alaskan Maki with salmon sake to wash it down. ” Curly said.
Pratik Shirke, a graduate student at Tech who tasted the Japanese cuisine for the first time, was full of praise,” This is by far one of the best restaurants downtown! A lot of varieties are available for vegetarians, plus it is not too pricey. You will definitely see me here a lot!”
The front of the house is a cozy lounge to wait for when the house is full. The house boasts of a different dessert every day and a variety of drinks. The restaurant has plans to start distributing cards for its regular customers and coupons especially for the students visiting from the next week.
The restaurant is closed only on Monday, and take-out services are available. Simply put, a delightful little place is open now for all the foodies and Japanese cuisine enthusiasts which is not at all exorbitant and serves a limitless range of items with the perfect milieu and is soon to become a prominent and celebrated restaurant for the sundry of Houghton and more. For more information check out their Facebook page https://facebook.com/skysushihoughton/ or call 906-275-2088.
