Toko is one of the places I've kind of been looking forward to all summer... not so much for the food as for the novelty. They have a feature that makes them relatively unique amongst Toronto's myriad sushi joints: a conveyor belt that carries little plates of sushi around the restaurant. When you see something you like trundling past your table you just snap it up; the plates are colour-coded by price so the waitress can tally up your bill.
Almost as soon as we sat down, I spotted some tempura shrimp maki going by. Yoink! I also helped myself to an assortment of other maki and appetizers. It was hit and miss, but mostly OK.
Of course you can also order items off the menu; I got a fairly standard miso soup and a tempura appetizer, plus a "New York" roll with fake crab on the inside and shrimp and tobiko on the outside. Not sure what's so New York about that, but it was good.
Like a bull to a red cape (or something), my dining companion was drawn to this lovely red-topped maki on a red plate. He pronounced it to be well worth the $2.50. My other friend decided to try sea urchin roe nigiri... I can't tell you what he said it tasted like, because this is a family blog.*
The biggest beef with our visit to Toko was -- now how can I put this gently -- the service sucked out loud. I mean our waitress was nice enough and all, what little we saw of her, but there simply weren't enough of her. The kitchen was slow too; my partners in crime ordered meals off the menu and they took forever... though not quite as long as their glasses of water, which our harried waitress forgot like 4 times. Oh, and they charged my companion $7.50 for his icky sea urchin thing, even though it was on a $2.50 plate.
Oh well. Maybe it was just an off night for them or something. I ate there before (granted it was like 2 years ago) and don't recall any complaints with the service. And this guy -- perhaps the only man in Toronto to dine in more sushi joints than myself this summer -- didn't mention anything about waiting 45 minutes for a glass of water. So I'll be willing to give them another shot.
(* I should point out that this was an assessment of sea urchin roe in general, not Toko's particular offering. Well, presumably.)
Thats a real shame, I've been there a few times, mostly pre-blog and I've never had slow service. I'd have been ticked off by that as well.
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