MANILA, Philippines – Do you also find yourself craving salmon sashimi at random hours of the day? If you’re salmon like me – too lazy to head out and a bit iffy on splurging on high-end Japanese restaurants, home-based Instagram shops are a godsend for people like us.

I discovered The Lucas Kitchen on Instagram, a family-owned, home-based online business founded in early 2020 by a a husband and wife who are both physical therapists by profession. When they felt that they were both not earning enough to support their newborn son Lucas – who was born in September 2019 – they decided to start The Lucas Kitchen for another source of income, named and inspired by their now three-year-old baby boy.

Inspired by the couple’s own cravings and those of their earliest customers, The Lucas Kitchen began offering different trays, platters, and boxes of simple Japanese favorites, like sashimi, maki, rolls, and inari. Since its inception, The Lucas Kitchen’s consistent best-seller is still the The Salmon Party Box, a visual crowd-pleaser that easily becomes the star of the potluck show.

It’s got everything a salmon lover would want – 150 grams of fresh, thick slices of premium salmon sashimi, as well as 32 pieces of different salmon-based maki and rolls, all homemade and fresh: salmon spicy rolls, Philadelphia roll, salmon maki, mango salmon roll, and a large piece of aburi spicy salmon inari, which is a flavorful mouthful of torched spicy salmon tartare atop sushi rice and sweet wakame, encased in chewy tofu skin.

For its price of P1,680, it’s worth it – aside from its appealing presentation, this box can easily feed up to 4-5 guests, with free lemon slices, pink ginger, wasabi paste, chopsticks, and cute mini bottles of soy sauce. Note that all sushi rolls are made to order and are only made fresh right before delivery!

For salmon purists who just want to gorge on sashimi, the Trio Platter (P1,220) is a good addition to your feast. It was easy to finish 300 grams of the soft, buttery salmon sashimi, as well as 300 grams of the fresh tuna sashimi and 8-10 grams of uni – everything tasted fresh, well-sourced, and not malansa at all. The generously sliced tuna and salmon were neither malitid nor chewy, and the uni was smooth and had none of those shucked “remnants” that some uni orders have.

Quality and quantity-wise, no complaints here – the slices are thicker than what you’d get in many higher-end (and more expensive) Japanese restaurants, and the platter can feed up to 3-4 guests.

The Lucas Kitchen prides itself on its dedication to preserve the fish’s freshness. “We’ve dedicated a space in our home to the processing of our sashimi – from the whole fish up to the final product. We’ve made our kitchen an enclosed and fully air-conditioned area, and it is fully equipped with chillers where we store the products once finished,” they told Rappler.

During delivery, The Lucas Kitchen’s products come with ice packs to ensure that the temperature of the sashimi is preserved throughout transportation. Proper handling is key to delivering fresh sashimi, The Lucas Kitchen added.

The Lucas Kitchen is located in New Manila, Quezon City. They are open daily for orders from 10 am to 10 pm via Instagram. – Rappler.com