Go Go Hachi is a serious sushi contender.
With dozens of sushi dealers in Berlin, anyone planning to open up a new sushi bar better have a few tricks up his sleeve. “Extreme sushi,” in odd shapes and with plenty of decorative add-ons, is all the rage. Then there’s the Kaiten trend- a more Zen-like version of conveyer belt sushi: portions drift past you on little wooden boats. Kaiten is usually for those diners who favour instant gratification over freshness. The nice thing about Go Go Hachi, a sushi bar under the S-Bahn behind the Kranzler Eck shopping centre a stone’s throw from the hubbub of Ku’damm, is that they offer both Kaiten and to-order sushi. Sit at the bar and loot the passing ships of their cargo, or sit at a table and order fresh. There’s a vast selection of traditional and “nouveau”-style sushi.
The quality at Go Go Hachi is hard to criticise. The ingredients of every morsel we tried were very fresh, from traditional nigiri (fish on rice) to inside-out maki to the fancy Go Go Shichi – a luscious packet of tuna, chili, leeks, salmon, white tuna and mackerel. The rice, crucially, is neither too sticky, nor too dry. Go Go Hachi’s weak point is its cocktails: The Mai Tai was more bubblegum than rum.