As with many older buildings in the Netherlands, the address at Potterstraat 16 has seen a few…read morechanges in use over the years. In the space that first housed the movie theater Scala (from 1935 until 1989) and the Discotheque Monza until earlier this year, Restaurant Sumo opened last week on 27 September. Extensive renovation has been done on the premises, resulting in a huge restaurant, capable of seating a couple hundred guests.
We arrived around 7 pm and were seated immediately, not on the ground floor, but up a tall stair case to the next floor, which opened into two surprisingly large rooms, decorated in dark red velour walls, with artistically made artificial cherry trees with blossoms. The restaurant formula is one that is getting known here in the Netherlands lately: namely, you get two hours to have five rounds of five choices of small plates per person. The menu includes sushi, Japanese soups, Japanese noodle dishes, Japanese dumplings and rice. At dinnertime, the price is 25 euro; at lunch time the price is 18 euro. The sushi was well-prepared and the miso soup was similar to what you get in a westernized Japanese restaurant. The gyoza was done correctly, that is, grilled only on one side, leaving the other half of the dumpling slightly doughy, as it is in Japan.
After putting in our first round, the 10 items arrived at our table within 3 or 4 minutes. Lightening speed by any restaurant standard. Thereafter, the rounds started to come slower and slower, a good balance, as what seems like will not sate your appetite, actually fills you up quite quickly. Service was attentive and polite.
This restaurant compares similarly to the other two sushi restaurants with the same formula, roughly the same price and both within two minutes' walk of Sumo (Sushi Qube at Oudegracht 61 and Umami at Oudegracht 74.) One wonders how three large sushi restaurants with the same formula within two minutes' walk of each other will all be able to survive in the long term.
