The Travel Critic

There was a time, not so very long ago, when the words buffet and Japanese together in a sentence meant only one thing: a heroic bout of salmonella, followed by 48 hours writhing in a Barcelona Airbnb praying to the porcelain gods and whispering promises to never, ever, eat again.

You remember the scene: a sad row of steel troughs under jaundiced heat lamps, withering away whatever mislabelled miso chicken and radioactive noodles they were trying to pass off as “Asian fusion.” You’d queue up like Soviet peasants in a breadline, armed with a cracked plastic plate and dead eyes, hoping to scoop a morsel of salmon before the guy in front of you piled it all on with the abandon of a man who’s never met moderation. Then it’d be garlic bread and spaghetti for the rest of us.

So when I heard Sushi Saki was an all-you-can-eat buffet in the heart of Barcelona, I nearly cancelled the whole thing. I was seconds away from booking a table at some smug Catalan spot called deconstructed bean or Casa de Foam. But, alas, the reviews were decent. Suspiciously decent. And I’ve always had a soft spot for a bargain and a bad idea, so I went.

And here’s the twist: it’s not a buffet. Not really. Not anymore. This is the modern world, and in the modern world, we do not queue. We order on iPads like civilised people. The food comes to us. The iPad interface is oddly satisfying—like playing Pokémon Go, but the Pikachu is spicy tuna maki and you get to eat it.

You’re allowed six items per order, which is a great number for those of us who hate commitment but love volume. The only catch (because there’s always a catch, isn’t there?) is that if you don’t finish what you’ve ordered, you’re charged extra. So there’s a mild whiff of the gulag about the place—waste not, or else.

For an adult in the evening, it’s €26. Twenty-six euros for unlimited sushi, tempura, gyoza, yakitori, edamame, and those slightly off-putting but always moreish seaweed salads that taste like kelp and disappointment. If you eat more than five plates—which, unless you’re a hedgehog or a supermodel with jaw wiring, you will—you’re officially winning. And reader, I won.

The food arrived within five minutes of ordering, which is either a testament to the efficiency of the kitchen or a worrying suggestion that it’s all been sitting there since last Wednesday, shrink-wrapped and ready for microwave salvation. Either way, it was hot. Or cold, when it was supposed to be. A miracle in itself.

Was it the best Japanese food I’ve had? No. Of course not. The sushi rice had the personality of damp blotting paper, the fish was perfectly fine if you didn’t think about it too much, and the chicken yakitori had clearly been through some things. But that’s not the point. The point is volume. The point is play. The point is that after your third round of spicy salmon hand rolls, you begin to feel like Henry VIII if Henry VIII liked wasabi mayo and spoke GCSE Spanish.

The vibe? Bright lights, hard chairs, shouty atmosphere, a decorative tree that looks like it was bought on clearance from a garden centre in 2009, and a soundtrack of generic house music punctuated by the beep of iPads and the gentle hum of chewing. This is not a date night spot unless you’re dating someone you hope will leave you.

But I liked it. Sort of. It’s a place for greedy, hungry people who want to eat their feelings in raw fish and fried things. It’s uncomplicated, efficient, and weirdly enjoyable, in the same way that watching a Ryan Reynolds film on an EasyJet flight at 7am is enjoyable. You know it’s not good. But you’re grateful it exists.

Would I go back? Probably not. But if you’re in Barcelona, tired of tapas, skint but starving, and willing to flirt with a sodium overdose, then Sushi Saki is worth a punt.

Just don’t call it a buffet. That’s traumatising.

Or as they’d say in Catalonia: rice it a go.