Sort-of Sushi,
RM1.80 a Plate

The name says it all

The sign reads 寿司明太 in kanji: sushi, mentai. True to the name, white fish, prawns and scallops all come topped with mentai mayo, and torched. They say a name reflects the thing. Here, the name covers it.

It is a conveyor-belt sushi chain born in Malaysia in 2011. Not a Japanese company.

The colour of the plate is the price

Prices are set by plate colour: yellow is RM1.80, red RM2.80. Outlets in Sarawak also run blue plates at RM3.70. A 10% service charge and 6% tax are added at the till, so the real price is just under 20% higher. Even so, a yellow plate comes to about RM2.10.

What surprised me is that these prices have not moved. Articles from 2016 already list yellow at RM1.80 and red at RM2.80. In those ten years, prices and wages in Malaysia have risen. Only on the plates has time stood still.

How sort-of is it?

A few things I found going round the belt:

Prawn tempura nigiri

Prawn tempura on rice, held on with a band of nori, finished with mayo and aonori. The flavour heads towards takoyaki.

Floss maki

A prawn-fry roll topped with tobiko and fluffy floss. It looks less like sushi than a blanket.

Torched salmon with tempura crumbs

Torched salmon, mayo and tempura crumbs. Crunchy and rich.

Menu curiosities

Kimchi scallop, jellyfish inari, cheese prawn fry, teriyaki fish bones, fried salmon skin.

A sushi chef in Japan might silently return these plates to the belt. I silently ate them.

The mentai mayo tastes nothing like mentaiko, and yet it is rather good. The tempura crumbs are crisp, as you would expect in a country that is very good at frying. You can add mentai mayo and crumbs to almost any nigiri or roll. It is addictive.

There is one weakness. The soy sauce dispenser is labelled “soy sauce sauce”, and the bottle looks exactly like a sauce bottle. Every time I use it, I feel I am pouring sauce on my sushi.

A classic all over Malaysia: the rice falls apart the moment you lift it, as if it had been rigged with explosives. If anything, I am impressed it reached the table in one piece. Eating it requires advanced technique.

As for the nori, I did not even notice it was there until my family pointed out that it tasted of nothing. No aroma, no flavour. In the sense of never getting in the way of the sushi, it is excellent.

One more thing impressed me. The sushi we ordered came piled high on the top plate of a stack, with the empty plates beneath simply stacked up. The bill is counted by plate colour and number. In other words, as long as the plate count is right, it does not matter which plate the sushi sits on. The rule of one item per plate, simply thrown away. It frees up the table and saves trips. A thoroughly rational invention. Japan should take note.

White tuna that is not tuna

The red-plate menu lists “Shiro Maguro (White Tuna)”. Tuna in name, but the fish served as “white tuna” at sushi restaurants abroad is often said to be not tuna at all, but a deep-sea fish such as escolar.

Escolar is rich in an oil the human body digests poorly (wax esters). Japan has banned its sale since 1981, and that of its relative, the oilfish, since 1970. Eat too much, and your stomach may get a surprise. I could not tell from the restaurant’s labelling what fish this white tuna actually is.

And the taste? Rich and oily. Close your eyes, add wasabi and soy sauce, and it is surprisingly like chu-toro. I had one plate, with a little courage and due respect. So far, no change in my health. If you are curious: in moderation.

The best thing was the udon

A confession: the best thing I ate at this sushi restaurant was the udon.

The broth is neither Kanto’s dark soy nor Kansai’s light one. It is sweet and salty, the Malaysian way. The noodles are reliably overcooked, with no bite at all. And yet it is strangely good. I left udon’s chewiness behind in Japan when I came to Malaysia. Once you are used to it, this is delicious.

In fairness: the salmon and the prawns are very good. These days, Japan’s conveyor-belt chains cannot come close. To meet salmon like this in Japan, I think you would have to go to Ginza.

Look closely, though, and much of the salmon is torched, and even the white tuna seems lightly cooked. Perhaps there is hardly any truly raw topping here at all. If that is a way of easing the worry about raw food in a hot country, it is rational too.

Through a business lens

Occupational hazard, so here is the restaurant through a business lens. Four lessons, briefly.

First: narrow the prices. Plates on the belt come in two prices, three in Sarawak. Customers never hesitate, and the restaurant settles the bill by counting plate colours. One menu card per colour does the job. Fewer price points make the whole operation lighter.

Second: control your costs. Before opening sushi restaurants, the company reportedly spent nearly 30 years supplying and wholesaling Japanese foodstuffs. By its own account, that is how it keeps quality up and costs down. I think that explains half of how it has held the same prices for ten years. The other half, as I see it, is mentai mayo, tempura crumbs and floss. Toppings that add satisfaction with cheap ingredients are cost design in its purest form.

Third: choose your location. This chain opens not in shopping malls but in residential neighbourhoods. Rents are lower, and local families come back again and again.

Here is the landscape of sushi chains in Malaysia, by outlet count. The biggest, Sushi King, was founded in 1995, has about 130 outlets nationwide and is halal-certified. Sushi Zanmai has a Japanese name but was born in Malaysia in 2007, and has no connection to Tokyo’s Sushizanmai. Singapore’s Sakae Sushi once had 40 outlets in Malaysia, but was down to two by the end of 2024. Japan’s largest chain, Sushiro, opened its first Malaysian outlet at KLCC in February 2025 and had three by September 2026.

At the very top are the many high-end omakase restaurants. Below them, the genuine Japanese article; in the middle, the halal market leader. There are takeaway chains such as Empire Sushi, too. And the bottom tier is held by the yellow plate. The leading Japanese contender still has three outlets. On this map of power, sort-of sushi wins by a landslide.

Fourth: how to grow. The chain used to franchise, with a franchise fee of RM80,000, royalties of 3% of sales, a 2% marketing levy and an initial investment of about RM450,000. That is how it reached Indonesia. It has stopped taking new franchisees, yet its outlet list has reached the fifties. The prize in its 15th-anniversary lucky draw was a Toyota. A restaurant charging RM1.80 a plate, giving away cars. Small ticket, big volume. The basics of business do not change on a sushi plate.

Gaspard with the yellow plate

In the Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, the assassin Scaramanga charged a million dollars a hit. Here, a plate costs RM1.80. Yellow, not gold; RM1.80, not a million dollars. Yet for 15 years it has kept its plates circling at the same price, and has passed 50 outlets.

Naturally, I ate only from yellow plates (let’s say).

Next week, a business lunch at an ultra-premium omakase restaurant in Kuala Lumpur is in my calendar. The top tier of the map, and the bottom. I am already looking forward to the comparison. More on that soon.

I started by calling this sort-of sushi. Let me correct that. This is not sort-of sushi. It is Malaysian sushi. And the udon, too.