Keen Sushipalooza readers (and other people with no life) may recall that my very first Sushipalooza trip, lo these 30 weeks ago, was a place called Omi on Church St. That was the "original" Omi, but the original chef departed a couple years ago to start a new restaurant on Carlton, also confusingly called Omi.
Compared to Old Omi, New Omi features a more stylish room and better, more inventive food. They also have an omakase option, which the waitress described as having "seven or eight" courses, though we ended up with eleven. Eleven! I present the highlights below, but you can see the rest in my Flickr set.
Like many Japanese restaurant meals, this one started with miso soup. Unlike many Japanese restaurant meals, it was really good miso soup. Creamy and tasty, with chunks of tofu, seaweed, and crunchy tempura bits.
But when I go out for sushi, what I'm really after is the wacky maki, and the Tempura Lobster Roll wrapped in thin-sliced cucumber was just the ticket. Very nicely presented with the emptied-out lobster tail, too.
The hands-down favourite of both myself and my dining companion was the Unagi Avocado roll. I always like BBQ eel, but this one was particularly nice, with a deliciously sweet teriyaki sauce. So good.
Of course it wasn't all sushi; other highlights included a grilled skate wing, breaded fried snapper (I think) served with 2 kinds of salad, and seared Hokkaido scallops atop little little rice croquette thingies.
By the time we made it through the first ten courses, we were pretty well stuffed, but you always have to make room for dessert. What would it be? A little bowl of green tea ice cream? Perhaps some tempura fried banana? No sir, it's an ice cream sandwich in the shape of a fish!
Omi on Carlton was by a fair margin the best meal I've had over the course of Sushipalooza. The priciest too, but the a la carte menu is quite reasonable, and at $70, the omakase is still a good value.
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