Sushi by Scratch: a real sushi show in a starred restaurant

I thought I had seen everything there was to see in my life. And yet, I recently attended a completely new kind of show. A two-hour show, where three chefs perform like in a hyperactive samurai ballet. They perform a 17-course omakase menu (a sushi menu determined to the taste of the chef), in front of an audience of only 10 people. It was, for me, unheard of!

We were five couples hidden in a room at the back of the Stillife bar for the inauguration of the very first bite, the very first service, on the very first day of the opening of the Sushi by Scratch restaurant. A dream evening where you can savor the talent of the chefs and where you can enjoy fish and shellfish transported by plane twice a week from the Toyosu market; fabulous ingredients prepared during an intimate, well-honed performance.

A first service at 5 p.m.

I love everything about mornings. Everything, everything, everything. The silence. See the sun rising. Take an hour to practice in the basement. Drinking my hot coffee with a ton of foam in small sips. Wait for the appetite to come. No texts. At 5:00 a.m., I still don’t feel like two boiled eggs. If I say all this, it’s because at Sushi by Scratch, I have the best of both worlds: I can wake up at dawn while having the feeling to have gone out to enjoy a delicious dinner and to have ended the evening in clubbing – without sacrificing my night’s sleep! This is the charm of the service at 5 p.m. I ate like a queen, drank rarities, grooved, and I got home before Cinderella. My kind of perfect evening.

A flawless experience worth its weight in gold

We understand that a post-pandemic restaurant outing is no longer as accessible as before. But for a complete and unforgettable outing, the price of this kind of big event is worth the equivalent of the price of a front row seat ticket to a concert at the Bell Centre. I tasted the exact same Michelin-starred menu at Sushi by Scratch in Montecito, California, but here in Montreal.

I reconnected with the sublime Saba fish, which I had tasted in Vancouver, while following the menu on the slate, placed behind the three chefs, with the most complete excitement. Another key moment of the surprise menu: a marrow paste that the chef burns with a torch and lets flow over a sushi. A delirium for the senses.

Three food-alcohol pairings are possible: whiskey, cocktails and sake. I chose sake for the presence of the apprentice “sake samurai”: a sake sommelier in training who will have his title in perhaps twenty years due to the scarcity of sake in our country. There are only three samurai sake in the country, and Japan recognizes only five per year in the world.

I am delighted that chef co-owners Frankland Lee and Victoria Kallas have chosen Montreal as the group’s first restaurant outside the United States. Welcome to our house !