A small gem making food to perfection!

A couple of weeks ago I went to celebrate mother's day or at least my daughter invited her mommy to eat at Kichi which is a sushi restaurant in a small town called Gouda. Gouda is famous for its cheese and syrupwafels and hopefully a good sushi restaurant. My wife has been here before and told me this sushi is the best she tasted so far in the netherlands so I guess we set the bar high then and my expections high aswell. With good faith and an empty stomache I stepped inside this restaurant....

Before this restaurant came here I went to this shop before as it was a dutch, average, lunchroom first and before that it was a recordstore as far as I can remember. Now it is a small but cozy restaurant with a warm atmosphere. The decoration looks nice with the right color combination and a bit in the mood for mothers day with all the cute balloons everywhere. We got a very warm welcome by the owners and talked a bit, as my wife has met them before and soon we were brought to our table. We received the menu and started looking at those awesome seafood candy I had to prepare for.

The menu (dutch and english!) has a great variety of all types of sushi you want to have, in the nigiri section I saw new ones like the Ark Shell nigiri and the flying fish row. To my delight they had the lowfat tuna and yellowtail tuna nigiri and of course I had to order those. The rest of the nigiri assortiment is carefully chosen and not standard. If you love nigiri then you love the variety Kichi has to offer.

For Uramaki they had a special one with Spider crab and scallops. Besides these there was a uramaki with tempura and advocado, hmmm sounds very interesting so I ordered all 3 to try it out. Temaki sushi was also good represented but didnt have choices I never had before. Of course they have sashimi as it won't be a good sushi restaurant if they didnt and it is very handy how to let you order. You can order be sorts like tuna, shrimp, salmon, scallops etc. but you can also take a mix of a big or small sashimi platter. The small one contains 6 different sashimi, 3 slices each. The big mix has 9 different sashimi, 3 slices each. We ordered the small mix as we ordered a whole fleet of sushi already and  this was good start of the evening and now we had to wait for the food. Oh, worth mentioning is is that Kichi offers a stack of side-dishes such as noodles (different kinds), misosoup, yakitori and plenty more. This time I focus more on the sushi though.

The service is excellent and keep you update about the progress which is nice, ordering drinks goes fast too and nice to see they serve a good amount of japanese beer. While waiting we talked a bit to the owner who told us they have been trained by a japanese chef so there I suddenly understand why wife was so hyped about this restaurant and it's sushi. First they served our starter which was marinated eel in sweet sauce and sesame on top of a bowl of rice. Now I had this in Japan and I don't know how they did it but it tasted exactly how I tasted it when I was in Japan in 2014 at a small restaurant in Kyoto near the geisha district Gion. The eel was cooked to perfection, seasoning was stunning and complimented the eel without over-doing it! Damn, this promise to be a great dinner!

After a nice 10 minutes the first sushi platter (you can choose your sushi per piece or some come per 8 pieces) and the presentation is good, The sushi looks appealing and invites you to eat. I took a little bit of soysauce, not to much as i want to taste the sushi, grabbed gently the first sushi, maguro (tuna) and prepared myself for some awesome sushi....

The first sushi I had tasted so fresh, the tuna was so clean and fresh, not too cold but good temperature. After eating some picked ginger I tasted the salmon, the crab, eel and Ark shell sushi and I was totally mindblown but in a good way! This was really the best sushi I have ever tasted in The Netherlands! Every sushi is so flavourful, the sushi rice was perfectly sweet and if it accidently touches soysauce it doesnt fall apart. Truly every sushi we ordered (about 20 different) tasted great, fresh and flavourful and made you very happy. The Ark shell sushi tasted great although it is a bit chewy but for this kind of seafood it supposed to be like this. The scallop and spider crab uramaki was very light in taste but complimented the rest of the sushi assortiment we have. Also tried the tempura with advocado uramaki which tasted nice and feels weird at first to taste rice and then fried shrimp. The way they seasoned the shrimp in the batter was nicely done and tasted a bit like honey.

Although we ate a lot of sushi we weren't full at all which was a good thing and it ment they put the right amount on each sushi, not too much and not too little. Every sushi was the same size and the slice of fish was bigger than the rice which means they are very royal with their portion and in Japan this also means the cook is generous towards the customers and like them to eat good sushi.

Next up was the sashimi as my wife loves sashimi and the presentation was again delightful and works on the tastebuds. The sashimi tasted very fresh, clean and had the good temperature. The mix was just good and we tasted shrimp, scallops, eal, mackrol, salmon and crab. The sashimi was very light and tempted us to order more. Because we became a bit full we ordered some last sushi to complete the dinner, I ordered the sea urchin and some more yellowtail tuna. Both tasted good but the sea urchin had a heavy flavour compared to the other sushi. Although it tasted good I feel this is one sushi you have to love to appreciate it. If you don't like fishy, heavy irony flavour, stay away from the sea urchin. Although this version is super done as I tasted a sea urchin sushi in Beijing which was totally disgusting!

My bar for sushi was set very high as I was one of the few foodbloggers in The Netherlands who had the priviledge to eat at Jiro's restaurant in Ginza. Yes, the Michelin star restaurant which is really the best in the world and a recommendation for any serious foodies! If you didn't hear about Jiro then first of all shame on you and secondly go watch his documentary ''Jiro: Dream of sushi'' as you will see and hear about this master chef and his life to become the best in the world. Now back to Kichi because the review is about this restaurant and I can be short: This is the absolute number one sushi restaurant in The Netherlands, the fish is freshly bought every day, nothing is frozen, the flavours of every piece of sushi, sashimi is about that perfection, that how they call it in Japan: Umami.

This is a true gem you don't find anywhere and offers excellent service, perfect atmosphere accompanied by the best sushi you can find. To all foodies I can only say, go to eat here asap! And if you want a piece of this sushi perfection but are in a hurry, don't worry as they also do take away! Oh and the price? Very reasonable especially as you compare it with other sushi restaurants. Leave them on the side though as here you need be, Kichi offers the best sushi in town. Enough said!

Website: http://www.kichi.nl/
Price: 30-50 euro a la carte per person