Sushipalooza '09

Bonus: Sushi Inn (1.5 km)

2011-04-09T00:29:00.005-04:00

So tonight I was wandering around trying to figure out what to have for dinner, when I simultaneously realized two things: 1) I haven't had sushi in forever, and 2) I was only a couple blocks away from Sushi Inn. If I'd kept going with the Sushipalooza thing, Sushi Inn would've come in around Week 39 or so.

Sushi Inn is located on Cumberland in the heart of Yorkville. It's oddly separated into two levels that don't seem to be connected to each other at all, as if there just happen to be two restaurants with the same name located one above the other. Not sure what's up with that. I arbitrarily went into the upstairs one.

Feeling slightly adventurous, I decided to get an appetizer that wasn't Mixed Tempura or Gyoza. Instead I got this lovely Ika Sugatayaki (grilled squid). It managed to avoid the rubbery fate that befalls too many squid dishes, and the ginger sauce was quite nice.

Then, as usual, I picked some rolls off the Special Maki menu, starting with the "house special" Sushi Inn Roll. Made with eel, avocado, and salmon skin, I found it to be worthy of its headliner status. Definitely my favourite out of the dishes I ordered.

They also offered 3 variations on the Dragon Roll; I went with the salmon-topped version. The avocado was a little on the soft side, and the presentation was, shall we say, somewhat odd. But it was quite tasty. Not as good as the Sushi Inn roll, but enjoyable nevertheless. The Kani Salad Roll was visually quite appealing, but the flavour was a little underwhelming. Probably because it was wrapped in cucumber. Should've seen that coming.

There we go, one more sushi place down! At this rate, I will have been to every sushi place within a 2km radius of my house by 2019!

Bonus: Simon Sushi (2.0 km)

2010-11-01T23:19:00.003-04:00

Hey, long time no sushi!

I'm not sure when or if I would've gotten as far as Simon Sushi on Spadina for Sushipalooza proper, but it's not so far away. Definitely one of the 100 closest sushi places to my house.

I built my meal at Simon Sushi by selecting a few of their alarmingly cheap maki rolls. The "Yonge Roll" featured tempura shrimp and pickled daikon radish or whatever that yellow stuff is. The "U of T Roll" had eel and avocado and cream cheese. What's that you say? Sounds weird? It was.

My favourite of the rolls was the promisingly named "Tropical Delight". I don't even remember what was inside, but it had mango on top. You can't go wrong with mango on top.

So yeah, Simon Sushi: pretty decent quality sushi at crappy sushi prices, which equals a bona fide bargain!

Does this writeup seem a little half-assed, after all these months of silence? So sue me. I'm tired. Goodnight!

Bonus: Sushi Queen Izakaya (1.0 km)

2010-06-25T20:48:00.006-04:00

If you've been following Sushipalooza since last year (why??), you may recall the sad tale of Mochizuki, which went out of business just before I got around to visiting it. Well something new has finally opened up in it's space. Is it a coffee shop? A haberdashery? A Kinkos? Heavens no, it's another sushi place!

Well actually a sushi place / izakaya, because izakayas are the hot food trend of summer 2010. Sushi Queen Izakaya an offshoot of the popular (I think) Sushi Queen on Queen St., but with some extra izakaya-y stuff on the menu. Also some additional wacky maki rolls. I love wacky maki!

But first I got started with some wakame seaweed salad which much like any other wakame salad I've had (i.e. good). Then from the izakaya menu, a bacon enoki roll, which is exactly what it sounds like, assuming it sounds like enoki mushrooms wrapped in bacon and grilled. And also assuming it sounds tasty. Which it was.

As it happens, Sushi Queen Izakaya is right up the street from the ill-fated Tatami Sushibar (still closed by the way, and still scattered with remnants of lunches left by fleeing diners), and they've really stepped in to fill the void in over-the-top presentation. Complete with a glowing bowl of sprouts in the middle of my plate of Paris Rolls. The rolls themselves were pretty good too; like inside-out spicy tuna and salmon rolls topped with lobster salad.

But personally I preferred the Hawaiian Roll, which incidentally contained neither ham nor pineapple. Instead it was tempura shrimp, crab stick, cucumber and tobiko in a rice paper wrapping. Oh and mango I think. Was there mango? I forget. Well it was good either way. (Ed.: No mango, but salmon. Good thing I take pictures to refresh my memory!)

Sushi Queen Izakaya doesn't have the same fun atmosphere of the perpetually-packed Guu (which moved into Sushi Plaza's old digs a few months ago), but it does have some pretty decent food. And if you hustle, it's 20% off until the end of July, or something like that.

Bonus: Tokyo Kitchen (0.9 km)

2010-05-13T23:01:00.005-04:00

You know, I'm not entirely sure why I didn't visit Tokyo Kitchen last summer during Sushipalooza proper. It was sitting right there, across the street from Masa on Charles St. Surely I couldn't have overlooked it while scouring the neighbourhood for sushi joints, and even if I did, I have a chat record of my friend telling me about it in the middle of the summer.

So I can only assume that I must have disqualified it for not primarily being a sushi restaurant. Which it's not; they do serve sushi, but it's buried at the back of the menu, behind pages of noodles, teriyakis, and Japanese curries. I probably could've made a case for including it, and certainly could've used it as an "extra"... but I didn't. And of course I have no recollection of any of this.

But enough about my failing brain. Let's talk about Tokyo Kitchen. Unfortunately, I forget the names of most of the dishes I ordered. Failing brain, you know. Whatever this is called, it's a deep-fried skewer of pork belly. It was OK I guess.

Still with the appetizers, and still deep-fried: little nuggets of chicken breast in a light batter that the menu claimed was soya sauce flavoured. Not pictured: my dining companion's seaweed salad -- not the usual wakame, but something featuring noodles and seaweed in a thick and rather sticky sauce. Much more appetizing than that sounds, I promise.

All right then, on to the main course. I had a beef curry with potato croquettes. The curry was much milder than, say, an Indian curry, but quite yummy. The croquettes weren't bad either. Nice crispy coating and all, though basically just mashed potato inside, a little bland on its own. Good thing I had all that delicious curry to eat with it.

Aw, how did I not get a picture of dessert? It was pretty nice: ice cream and fruit and little cubes of some sort of gelatin stuff. Must've slipped my mind. Sigh.

As I think I demonstrated over the course of Sushipalooza, Yonge St. has a whole lot of cheap sushi restaurants. What it doesn't have so much of is actual Japanese food. If you're looking to move beyond the maki, perhaps you should give Tokyo Kitchen a try. It's hardly hiding at all!

(Someone was complaining recently that I never put restaurant addresses in my posts. That's because I'm too lazy to make a note of them. But Tokyo Kitchen is on Charles just east of Yonge, on the ground floor of the TPA garage.)

Update: Tatami Sushibar

2010-04-17T22:25:00.003-04:00

You may recall a few weeks ago I checked out Tatami Sushibar at Yonge and Gould. Hey, I wonder how things are going for Tatami?

Uh-oh, this can't be good for business. Part of the wall above the restaurant collapsed in the middle of lunch time yesterday, causing quite a mess but apparently not injuring anybody. Today they had a demolition crew out there, pulling more of the building down before it came down on its own. The end result was a large pile of rubble (mostly) outside the restaurant.

Yeah, so looks like Tatami might be closed for a few days. Or much much longer, depending on the state of that building. Ouch.

Special: Golden Maki, Newmarket ON (52 km)

2010-03-08T20:21:00.007-05:00

I'm clearly out of practice with this whole sushi-blogging thing, because I forgot a key part of the process at Newmarket's Golden Maki; I didn't get a picture of the outside of the place for the header. Oops. And it's so new I can't even steal a picture from Google Streetview. Oh well. It looks like a sushi restaurant in a suburban strip plaza.

At least I remembered to take pictures of the food. Like this "teriyaki maki" thing... at least I think that's what it was called. That's what it should've been called, anyway. It was enoki mushrooms wrapped in grilled beef. Sound good? It was.

Appetizers dispensed with, we dug in to our maki course. The Rainbow Roll was pretty good, but the real hit of the meal was the "Golden" roll. It's beyond me why more places don't serve rolls with mango. It was mangotastic. My dining companions very nearly came to blows over the last piece.

But we're not done with the maki yet. Next up was the Vegetarian Dragon roll. What a silly name, everybody knows dragons are princessavores. Name notwithstanding, it was a pretty nice roll, especially if you like tempura yam. And who doesn't?

But to heck with dinner, I only judge a sushi place by the quality of their desserts. And get a load of this deep-fried mango ice cream! Yeah, that's right, more mango. You wanna fight about it?

Newmarket isn't quite as thick with sushi joints as downtown Toronto, but between Solo Sushi Ya and now Golden Maki, you should be able to find something worth eating up there. So quit complaining.

Bonus: Tatimi Sushibar (0.9 km)

2010-02-21T19:55:00.007-05:00

More than anything, this is a story about the oblivious haze in which I live most of my life.

Yesterday I was walking down Yonge St., and I was surprised to see a new sushi restaurant which I'd never noticed before. Now this kind of thing happens fairly frequently in Toronto, where sushi restaurants spring up with astonishing regularity, but I've walked past that intersection numerous times in the past few weeks -- including the night before -- and had never noticed any new sushi restaurant, or even a "coming soon" sign. It was as if it had materialized literally overnight. Hell, maybe it did.

The sushi place in question is Tatami Sushibar which, like Sushi Shop, is apparently an import from Montreal. Which I guess explains that "The Chaud" on my bill. "What Chaud," I thought. "I didn't order any Chauds."

What I did order was a Wonton Miso Soup, which was pretty good and gets extra points for the little chunks of shitake mushrooms floating in it. Also some Katsu Tofu, because it's been like 3 weeks since I last had deep-fried tofu.

Tatami's selection of maki and nigiri isn't super extensive, but they have enough interesting things to choose from. I got a Dragon Ball roll, with tempura shrimp and crab stick, as well as a smoked salmon filled Vancouver Roll served with a side of cream cheese mayo for dipping. Oh yeah, and some unagi nigiri. Am I too predictable?

Now I've seen quite a bit of sushi over the past 9 months or so. Some of it has been crammed onto a big platter, some of it has been elegantly plated, but this... this has got to take the cake as the most over-the-top fancy presentation in all of Sushipalooza. Just look at that! All those little sticks holding up the sour cherries and whatnot were made out of fried noodles or something similar and technically edible. I picked them all out before it even occurred to me to use them to eat the sushi like popsicles. Now that would've been the classy thing to do!

And finally, we come to the semi-traditional sushi dessert of fried banana drizzled with honey. I think I might have preferred it drizzled with chocolate, but whatever, honey's good too.

So that's Tatami: King and Spadina style on a Yonge and Carlton budget! Or something like that. Hey, you can use that slogan guys, free of charge!

And yes, I know, I still haven't gone to Japango. I'll get to it...

Bonus: Etsu (1.8 km)

2010-01-30T22:52:00.005-05:00

Hey everybody, long time no see! I know I half-promised to go to Japango at some point, and I tried to go tonight... but it turns out you can't just wander in there on a Saturday night without a reservation and expect to get a table. In all my 30-odd Sushipalooza outings, I never once needed a reservation. Of course I usually went on weeknights, and often to places with more tables and less of a reputation than Japango. Oh well, I guess I'll have to go some other time.

In the meantime, Japango's loss was Etsu's gain. Etsu is a relatively recent addition to Baldwin Village's already rather vast selection of Japanese restaurants. Departing Japango, we had to pass no fewer than 8 other sushi joints to get to Etsu, but all things considered I'm glad we did.

There were 3 people in our party, and we decided to keep things simple and order the "Dinner for 3", which was basically all the stuff you'd get in a standard bento box, multiplied by 3. But instead of crummy "green salad", it comes with wakame seaweed salad, so we're off to a good start.

After the salad came some fairly standard miso soup and tempura vegetables and shrimp. After that was the sushi course, consisting of assorted nigiri and California rolls. They were pretty good California rolls.

The "main course" of teriyaki chicken came served on a sizzling iron platter. I'm a real sucker for anything served on a sizzling iron platter. Beats a plastic bento box any day.

OK, we didn't quite keep it simple; in addition to our set-course dinner we got a fried tofu appetizer (because tofo just wants to be deep fried) and a Black Dragon roll, because otherwise I wouldn't have gotten any BBQ eel with my dinner.

After our dessert we had a pot of "Blooming Tea", a clear tea of aloe, honey, and rose buds served in a transparent glass pot. It was bloomin' fantastic. Very sweet, with a nice floral fragrance. A good way to settle your stomach after overstuffing it with sushi.

So yeah, we didn't get to go to Japango like we planned, but it all worked out pretty well in the end. The waitress (after mentioning they'd only been open 3 months) asked us to tell our friends if we liked the place. So, hey friends: we liked Etsu!

(p.s. - Be sure to check out the bathrooms!)

Post-Holiday Leftovers

2010-01-04T21:10:00.004-05:00

Sushipalooza may have officially wrapped up at the end of 2009, but that doesn't mean I'm out of sushi places. Heck, if it was summer I might've kept it going to a 2km radius, but that's a little far to walk in this miserable winter weather.

Below are what would've (theoretically, maybe) been the next Sushipalooza visits, if only I had more gumption.

Sushi Shop - Bloor & Church (1.0 km)

Hey, when did this happen? I went to the Yonge and Carlton location of Sushi Shop some months ago, and I've been watching for their second location to open, but obviously I'm too lazy to check every week. It looks like Sushi Shop II should've made the final cut and pushed Aji Sai to the grand finale spot. Oops!

Japango (1.4 km)

I hear good things about this place, so I kind of regret cutting things off right before I got to it. Not to spoil the surprise, but I may end up checking it out as a "bonus" trip soon.

Aka Sushi (1.4 km)

Well, I guess I wouldn't have made it to Aka Sushi anyway... I believe they closed up shop sometime in October or November.

Sushi-Q - Eaton Centre (1.4 km)

The Sushi-Q location in Toronto Life Square may be MIA, but across the street in the Eaton Centre they're still going strong. In my university days I used to occasionally go here for their end-of-day half price specials (though these days it's like 20% off or something similarly lame).

Sushi & Bento (1.5 km)

Right up the street from Kyoto House, this is another one that I totally would've gone to if the year was just a few weeks longer.

Yuki Sushi (1.5 km)

No sooner had Aka Sushi curled up its toes and died when Yuki Sushi popped up a block away (in the former Wimpy's Diner location at Dundas and University) to take its place.

Yamato (1.5 km)

Wait, is a Japanese Steak House anything like a sushi restaurant? Maybe this place would've been disqualified... I hope not, because it was personally recommended by a friend of mine.

Sushi Inn (1.5 km)

It's in Yorkville, so I'm sure that means lots of big Hollywood stars have sent their errand boys in there to pick something up. Of course we already know that Patrick Stewart prefers Tokyo Sushi.

Shogun (1.5 km)

I've been here before... they're right across from the Cumberland theatre, and you can get sukiyaki cooked on a hot plate at your table. Or is it shabu-shabu?

Sushi Baldwin (1.6 km)

The dense knot of restaurants at the east end of Baldwin includes perhaps the highest per-storefront density of sushi places in town, starting with Sushi Baldwin.

Kuni Sushi Ya (1.7 km)

A little further along Baldwin, Kuni Sushi Ya offers what I'm sure is a lovely little patio when it's not minus effing sixteen outside.

Kon-Nichi-Wa (1.7 km)

This place was closed on the Saturday afternoon I walked by, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that's not permanent. No menu posted outside, so I'm not sure if they're a "sushi" restaurant per se.

Etsu (1.8 km)

Man, going over this list is making me a little wistful for all the places I'll be missing out on. Maybe I'll check a few of them out anyway. Who's gonna stop me? You??

Fujiyama (1.8 km)

I think this is the only sushi restaurant on the Baldwin strip I have been to. I had a bowl of seafood tempura udon. The tempura was soggy, because it was floating in a bowl of soup. Duh.

Gallery Sushi (1.8 km)

If you can't find enough sushi restaurants on Baldwin, there's another mini-node around the corner at Dundas and McCaul, including Gallery Sushi in the Village by the Grange.

Just up the mall from Gallery Sushi are two Japanese-but-not-necessarily-sushi restaurants: Sakura in the food court, and diner-style Manpuku.

Sushi & BBQ (1.8 km)

Right across the street from Village by the Grange; I have no idea if this place is any relation to the Sushi & BBQ on Yonge St. Probably, though.

And that's as far out as I bothered to look. If you're counting (and I am), that's nearly 50 sushi restaurants within less than 2km of my house. Which is a lot of sushi! That was kind of the point of this whole enterprise, right? Wait, what was the point again?

Sushipalooza '09: The Year in Review

2009-12-31T22:36:00.004-05:00

Well as you may have noticed, this week's entry marked the (second) official end to Sushipalooza '09. It seemed as good a time as any to end it, being the end of the year and all. As the weather got colder and the walks got longer, it started to feel like I was reaching the limit of what I could reasonably call "local" sushi places. I probably could've dragged it out for a few more weeks, but then I wouldn't have been able to end things at the end of the year in an all-you-can-eat joint with my family. Better to go out with a bang than a whimper, I always say!

So what have we learned? Lots! Though very little of it is of any use:

Total sushi restaurants visited: 33 (not counting out-of-town extra places).
Furthest distance traveled: 1.4 km (actually, 1.37).
Total spent: $896 (!... and I didn't even pay for a couple that people genorously treated me to).
Best meal: Omi on Carlton.
Worst meal: Mariko.
Blowfish-related food poisonings: 0.

Well, that's that. More or less. I'm sure I'll still eat sushi from time to time, and when I do, probably I'll be unable to resist the urge to photograph it and blog about it. So there's that to look forward to.

Thanks for joining me on this fantastic quest, imaginary readers! It's been a slice! Happy New Year!

Week 33: Kyoto House (1.4 km)

2009-12-29T21:56:00.004-05:00

Well, this is it: the Grand Finale of Sushipalooza! Yes, 2009 is drawing to a close, and with it we bid adieu to Sushipalooza '09. Stay tuned for a wrap-up post in a couple days, but right now let's get to our final Sushipalooza destination: Kyoto House at Dundas and Elizabeth.

This being a special occasion and all, I dragged every family member who lives within a 1000 km radius along with me to sample Kyoto House's all-you-can-eat menu. Of course I promptly lost track of what we ordered and what was what, so the following pictures and descriptions will be even more useless than usual:

I haphazardly ticked off most of the things on the order form and handed it in, and we were soon presented with a large platter containing at least 6 different types of maki, and as many varieties of nigiri. Some of the maki got mixed reviews, but everybody found something they liked and all the rolls found somebody who liked them, so it's all good. For an all-you-can-eat place, the rice-to-fish ratio was pretty decent.

That giant platter wasn't big enough to contain our entire first round: the overflow included a Tempura Shrimp Roll and a Spider Roll, along with various fried and grilled items (teriyaki chicken, beef ribs, tempura yam...)

Somehow though, we found room for a second round, anchored by a Rainbow Roll and supplemented unagi nigiri, crab-and-avocado rolls, tempura calamari rings, and Lord knows what else. I was starting to slip into a food coma by this point.

Oddly, while some AYCE sushi places seem to "forget" to bring you one or two of your more expensive items, the only things Kyoto House forgot were the cheapest things on the menu. We ordered bowls of steamed rice -- surely the cheapest and easiest item of all -- on two separate occasions, and they never did show up. Weird. Well, whatever. There was unanimous agreement that Kyoto House was far better than that crummy Mariko around the corner on Yonge St. All in all, it was a fitting and satisfying conclusion to the Great Sushipalooza Experiment.

The End! (Sort of).

Week 32: Aji Sai (1.3 km)

2009-12-21T21:20:00.003-05:00

Yay, another all-you-can-eat sushi place! Boo, all my friends and/or family are either busy with the holidays or sick of joining me on sushi junkets! So once again, I had to go it alone.

The problem with solo AYCE sushi is that with fewer mouths to share the rolls, it's hard to get a decent variety. So my strategy was to skip the silly salads and appetizers and cram as much maki into my gullet as humanly possible. The menu didn't have any pictures or descriptions, so I did the only sensible thing: picked the rolls with the most interesting names.

Turns out the "Cowboy Roll" contains grilled beef. Makes sense. The optimistically named "Excellent Roll" was filled with tempura shrimp and avocado, and topped with slices of whitefish and spicy mayo. I guess it was pretty excellent.

As eponymous house-special rolls go, the "Aji Sai Roll" with crab stick and tempura bits isn't very elaborate, but it was pretty good nevertheless. And for some reason I can never resist the tamago (egg) nigiri.

I still had room for one more charmingly-named roll, so I went with the "Rock 'n' Roll": a salmon and snapper maki dipped in tempura batter and deep-fried. Similar in concept to the Fried Smoked Salmon Roll at Sushi Club, but with a much cooler name.

For dessert I ordered a fried banana with mango ice cream, which I promptly dug into, completely forgetting to take a picture. Oh well. It looked like a fried banana with mango ice cream. It tasted like a fried banana with mango ice cream.

Well, Merry Sushimas everybody! Peace out!

Week 31: Sushi on the Run - Cumberland Terrace (1.2 km)

2009-12-14T21:16:00.006-05:00

Well hey, this sounds familiar, doesn't it? Yes, I've already been to a Sushi on the Run, 5 months and 0.8 km ago. This week's location is in the food court of the perpetually doomed Cumberland Terrace mall in Yorkville. As you can see, I didn't get a photo of the store, but it's not much to look at anyway.

Like its sister store down at College Park, the Cumberland Terrace Sushi on the Run seems to mostly focus on the lunchtime trade, and by the time dinner rolls around they're busy selling off their remaining stock at half price.

One of the few items remaining in the case at quarter to 6 was a nigiri + maki combo containing freakishly pink tuna, salmon, shrimp, and the other thing, along with some somewhat withered California Roll.

The other roll I got didn't have a label on it, but it basically looked like a slightly thicker California Roll ("crab", cucumber and avocado) with rice and tobiko on the outside. It was alright.

After last week's deluxe feast, Sushi on the Run was obviously not very exciting. Then again, at $10.60 (not including the miso soup from my own personal stash), I believe we set a new record for Cheapest Sushipalooza. So that's something.

Week 30: Omi on Carlton (1.2 km)

2009-12-07T22:38:00.006-05:00

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.

Week 29: Nijo (1.2 km)

2009-12-01T13:45:00.005-05:00

This week Sushipalooza once again strays a few blocks from Yonge St., over to Nijo in the Greenwin Square mall at Bloor and Mount Pleasant. Despite a fairly well-hidden location, Nijo wasn't as devoid of customers as some other places I've seen, so that's good.

Many sushi places serve Sunomono Salad, but Nijo was the first I've seen to offer a Sunomono Soup. Basically a Sunomono Salad swimming in hot broth? An intriguing idea, but one that didn't really work for me. Plus the shrimp was overcooked.

Nijo's Sushi Pizza comes in both salmon and tuna varieties. My Tuna Sushi Pizza came piled with such a generous heap of chopped fish that I couldn't see the crispy rice "crust", which miraculously managed to stay crispy under all that topping.

If I were giving out awards for Most Oddly-Named Special Maki, Nijo's "American Dream Roll" would be a strong contender. The fillings -- tempura shrimp, crab stick avocado -- were not as original as the name.

The Fire Mountain Roll was my favourite part of the meal: BBQ eel, salmon, and more crab stick, shaped to resemble a mountain range and topped with red tobiko "lava". At least, I took it to be a volcano... maybe it was supposed to represent a California wildfire, with the tobiko flames laying waste to imaginary multi-million dollar homes perched on the nori slopes. Either way, it was a nice presentation, and tasted pretty good too.

So next time you're looking or sushi on Bloor East, look harder. Nijo's around there somewhere.

Week 28: Bento Nouveau - Sick Kids Hospital (1.1 km)

2009-11-26T20:39:00.004-05:00

I'd like to begin this week's Sushipalooza entry, if I may, with a brief discussion of the Rules of Sushipalooza.

The Official Sushipalooza Rule Book (a handsome leather-bound copy of which is beside me on my desk as I write this) states that in order to qualify for Sushipalooza, an establishment's primary line of business must be sushi and related cuisine. Other places that happen to sell sushi but mostly sell other stuff -- such as supermarkets -- don't count. Sure, you can get little trays of sushi at Metro, but Metro is not a sushi place. The same goes for branded sushi counters colocated in grocery stores... but standalone kiosks in mall food courts and whatnot are fair game.

And that's why the Bento Nouveau location in the atrium of Hospital for Sick Children is included on the Sushipalooza list, but the Bento Nouveau location inside the Valu-Mart at Manulife Centre is not. It may seem silly and arbitrary, but hey, those are the rules, and without rules there is only chaos.

So I went to Bento Nouveau at Sick Kids yesterday after work, around 6:30. The counter was empty, and the staff were busy cleaning up and cashing out. Drat. Just missed 'em. Today I ducked out of work as early as I reasonably could, and got to Bento Nouveau around 5:45... and the staff were busy cleaning up and cashing out. On my earlier mission to case the joint and take pictures during midday weekend hours, they were also closed. Clearly they had no intention of being open when I was in the vicinity... and yet they weren't ambiguously out of business like Sushi-Q. I had to find a way to include them.

So I decided to cheat like a mofo. Rules are made to be broken, right?

I hiked up to the Bento Nouveau at Manulife Centre (which, incidentally, is almost the exact same distance from Sushipalooza home base as Sick Kids is) and picked up my sushi there. Nevertheless, the sushi place of record for this week remains the Sick Kids Bento Nouveau. I figure all the sushi came from the same Bento Nouveau factory this morning anyway, so what's the difference?

Well then, that story was so long, I'm pretty much out of time and inclination to talk about the food. I got something called a California Sushi Combo, which included 3 different types of maki of varying similarity to California Rolls. They were all perfectly decent, though there's nothing earth-shatteringly original here. And I got some shrimp nigiri, just because it's been a while.

Although, speaking of originality, one thing they did have (I should have taken a picture!) was some sort of weird sushi/sandwich hybrid: looked like smoked salmon and a slice of bread, rolled up into a vaguely maki-like presentation. So don't let it be said that Bento Nouveau doesn't think outside the bento box! (har.)

Week 27: Ichimi Sushi (1.1 km)

2009-11-21T21:25:00.005-05:00

For this week's super-late Sushipalooza entry, Ichimi Sushi at Bay and Edward acts as a last-minute replacement for the mysteriously absent Sushi-Q. Well all right, a real restaurant instead of a food court kiosk! Let's go!

My meal came with a free green salad, but I passed on it and ordered a wakame seaweed salad instead. Good call. Crisp and tasty. I also got some gyoza (not pictured, and not very exciting).

If there's one thing I like to see in a maki roll, it's crazy. So the Crazy Scallop roll was practically calling my name. A tempura shrimp and crab roll, each piece topped off with a breaded fried scallop. A little tricky to eat, but every bit as crazy as advertized.

Less crazy, but still good, was the Golden Roll, with mango and salmon. In fact, I think I liked this one the best. Mango kicks avocado's ass.

My only complaint with Ichimi was that it was a fair bit more expensive than many of the other places in the neighbourhood, without actually being proportionally better or classier. I mean, who do you think you are, Daio?

Anyway, for those of you keeping track, that is now 26 places that are better than stupid jackass Mariko

Extra: Sushi-Q - Toronto Life Square

2009-11-21T20:58:00.006-05:00

Well I think I finally figured out why I could never catch the Sushi-Q franchise in Toronto Life Square (a.k.a. Metropolis, 10 Dundas East, That Monstrosity at Yonge and Dundas) when they were open: it seems they never are.

Every time I dropped by, they appeared to be closed for the day. It didn't look like they were out of business; there was food in the fridge, papers on the counter, cleaning supplies by the sink, and a general air of "ooh, you just missed us, try earlier next time". I thought perhaps they were only open for lunch or something. But in my last attempt today, I noticed that everything was sitting in the exact same place it had been on Thursday. Closer inspection revealed a small stack of notices from the landlord, citing them for not being open during mall hours. They dated back to November 7, so presumably the owner hasn't even set foot in the place since then.

So it does not bode well for Sushi-Q. If by some miracle the owner returns from his/her vacation before the landlord evicts them, I'll pay them a visit, but until then I'm going to consider Sushi-Q to be kaput, which means once again we must carry on down the list to the next place... and quickly, it's already Saturday!

Update: Mariko

2009-11-20T20:50:00.009-05:00

Some weeks ago (9 weeks, to be precise), I visited Mariko Sushi at Yonge and Elm. In my write-up, I mentioned a mix-up with the bill. If you'll indulge me, I'd like to expand on that story a bit now.

Here's what happened: we were given one single bill for our party, but two of us needed to pay with our respective credit cards, while a third was paying cash. Now I realize this is a minor pain in the butt for the staff, and we should have asked for separate bills ahead of time. But we clearly explained to the server: put $x on this card, put $y on that card, and we'll pay the balance in cash. She took our cards and our cash and went off. When she came back, I found that my card had been run for the amount of my meal plus the person who paid in cash. They had screwed up and double-charged us for one of the meals.

But whatever, screw-ups happen, and we had kind of made things complicated for them. I went up to the counter and pointed out the error, and after much confused discussion amongst the staff, they determined the correct course of action to be to re-run my card for the right amount.

It's important to note here that my card hadn't been charged for the incorrect amount, just pre-authed, so they couldn't (and didn't need to) issue a refund. In a restaurant, the funds aren't actually "captured" until you fill in the tip / total, sign the receipt, and give it back to them. I did not sign the receipt, of course, since the amount was wrong. They put a line through the un-signed receipt and set it aside. I kept my copy of the incorrect receipt on file, just in case. A few weeks later, I got my credit card statement, and only the correct bill had been charged. They hadn't captured the erroneous pre-auth. Good! I pitched out the receipt and promptly forgot about the whole thing.

Flash forward to today. I'm reconciling my October credit card statement -- the one after the one with the charge to Mariko -- and what do I see? Another damn charge to Mariko, that's what. It's that incorrect and un-signed pre-auth, posted ten days after I was actually in the restaurant, late enough to push it to the following statement. So the stupid jerkwads charged me for three meals, when I only ate one, and it wasn't very good.

So now I feel like a chump for kinda pulling my punches in my original write-up. So let me set the record straight: Mariko on Yonge Street SUCKS. Some of the food was on the OK side of mediocre, but some of it was decidedly sub-par, and none of it stood out above anywhere else I've been to. And the place was disgustingly filthy. The table was all sticky and gunky; we spread napkins over it so we wouldn't have to touch it, and at the end of the meal they were all brown and gross on the bottom. We considered moving to another table, but it was just as bad. We may have considered asking the waitress to clean it for us, if we ever saw her. Which brings me to the service. Oh, the service. The best thing I can say about them is they weren't actively rude. But they sure were slow and incompetent. It took them forever to take our order, and forever to bring our food, and when they did bring it they brought the wrong thing or forgot something more than once. One member of our party waited 40 minutes for a damn can of pop. Another one finally got sick of being ignored and got up and marched over to the clutch of chatting waitresses to submit our order. Oh, and they triple-charged my credit card!

Heed my words, oh ~~hundreds~~ ~~dozens~~ couple of loyal readers: if you're looking for sushi on Yonge St., DO NOT GO TO MARIKO! I can recommend (so far) 25 better sushi places within easy walking distance. Oh, cruel Sushi Business Gods, why could you not have made Mariko on Yonge go belly-up instead of Mochizuki? I shake my fist at you in impotent rage, Mariko on Yonge! I will curse your opprobrious name with my dying breath!

So, I guess I have to call my credit card company tomorrow. Sigh.

(Disclaimer: there are other Mariko locations in town; they might not suck. But the one on Yonge St. sure does.)

[Photo by waferbaby, used under a Creative Commons license]

Special: Ikki Sushi (12.5 km)

2009-11-17T20:29:00.005-05:00

I seem to be having some logistical difficulties getting to this week's Sushipalooza venue during their operating hours. So to tide you (or me?) over until I can work that out, I had lunch at Ikki Sushi, way out in the semi-hinterlands of southwest Scarborough.

It's tempting to scoff at the idea of sushi dining in a squat, vividly (dare I say garishly) coloured restaurant surrounded by strip plazas and auto repair shops... especially when the name sounds suspiciously like "icky". But I'm actually quite fond of Ikki Sushi; I've been there several times and find the quality and price to be quite reasonable. And let's face it, nothing about most of the sushi joints on the Yonge St. strip is any more gourmet. Except maybe the colour scheme.

To start with, I ordered some fried tofu, proving once again that tofu is in fact edible, if you deep fry it first. The coating was somewhat crispier than some of the similar dishes I've had elsewhere. Crispy == good.

Where downtown places often offer a "Yonge Maki" or a "Queen St Roll" or whatever, Ikki Sushi paid homage to its nearest major intersection with a Kingston Roll and a Midland Roll. I got one of each. I forget which was which.

My favourite of the two rolls contained crab stick and avocado, topped with slices of cooked fish and piles of tobiko and green onion. The other one was OK too, although being composed mostly of cooked fish and avocado, the texture was a little bit on the soft side. But overall, the Kingston and Midland stacked up just fine to a Yonge and Carlton.

And by the way, it's pronounced "ee-kee".

Week 26: Asahi on Carlton (1.0 km)

2009-11-10T20:20:00.006-05:00

After that disappointing false start with Mochizuki, Week 26 of Sushipalooza is back on track, with our first significant departure from Yonge St... all the way over to Asahi Japanese Restaurant on Carlton between Sherbourne and Parliament. If that name sounds familiar, it may be because I already visited an Asahi, up on Church St. As far as I can tell, the two places are related in name only.

I was re-surprised to re-discover that Asahi offers all-you-can-eat sushi... I read that some time ago on BlogTO, but it had totally slipped my mind. Which is unfortunate, because it caused me to make a major AYCE sushi blunder: trying to go it alone.

I started out with some agedashi tofu, which I still say is reason enough to justify tofu as a foodstuff. I've had some ho-hum agedashi tofu, but this one was really nice, with a light crispy batter.

I haven't really ordered a lot of Sushi Pizza, but I think as Sushi Pizzas go, this one is pretty spartan. Kinda nice though, lets you enjoy the salmon and the crispy rice "crust" without being overwhelmed by a lot of other stuff.

Asahi's menu lacked any sort of description for their maki rolls, which is a good thing if you like surprises. I ordered a "sunset roll" and was pleasantly surprised to receive a kani / avocado / cucumber maki topped with salmon and a dollop of mayo.

But I didn't need a description for the BBQ eel roll. It was a pretty decent BBQ eel roll. Better than some, not as good as others. Fair to middlin'. But that's "very good" by AYCE standards.

The Spider Roll was a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, it was a tasty, generously sized roll, and I think the crab stick goes well with the soft-shell crab. But on the other hand, a spider roll without the legs sticking out the ends is not a freaking spider roll!

At $21, Asahi is not one of the cheaper AYCE sushi options around, but come on... that's still a lot cheaper than ordering a few things a la carte, and the food doesn't suck like some cheap AYCE joints. And I am freaking stuffed.

Extra: Mochizuki (1.0 km)

2009-11-09T20:54:00.004-05:00

Oh noes! Looks like we have our first official casualty of Sushipalooza! Although Sushi Plaza and Sushi Train were already closed before I started my little journey, Mochizuki at Bay and Elm was alive and kicking as recently as a few weeks ago... in fact the eviction notice on the door is dated October 29. So close!

This was a real disappointment, because I was briefly looking forward to Mochizuki... from the time I started casually looking around at reviews yesterday until the time I stumbled on this Chowhound post today alerting me to its demise. I dropped by to check it out for myself, and yup, they're closed all right. I believe this makes Toko the only remaining "conveyor belt" sushi establishment in the Sushipalooza Zone. Boo-urns!

To commemorate the passing of Mochizuki, I went home and made myself some crescent dogs, then sliced them up and served them maki-style. Somehow, it wasn't quite the same.

But never fear, Sushipalooza is prepared for this eventuality. Everything just shifts up by a week and we carry on as usual. Later this week I'll go check out the next place on my list... I hope they're still open!

Announcement: A Sushipalooza Milestone!

2009-11-09T12:56:00.002-05:00

Well, 25 weeks in, we've finally turned a major page here at Sushipalooza... as of Sushi Club, we have officially exhausted all the sushi places within a one kilometre walk of my house! I know, according to the distances I've posted, it may appear as though I reached the 1km mark a couple weeks ago, but those distances are rounded to the nearest 0.1 km... in fact Sushi Club was only 990 m. You know, give or take a couple. But definitely less than 1000.

Let's just pause a moment to reflect on that: there are twenty-five sushi restaurants within a 1 kilometre radius... and that's walking distance, not some as-the-crow-flies nonsense. That is a whole lot of sushi.

And yet, so much more sushi remains. What will the next kilometre hold? Let's find out!

Week 25: Sushi Club (1.0 km)

2009-11-04T21:33:00.004-05:00

OK, I confess. When I do "extra" entries for not-actually-sushi places like Okonomi House, I don't bother to accurately measure off the distance. If I had, I probably would have left it for a week or two... I'm surprised it didn't occur to me that it was practically next door to Sushi Club, on Charles behind the Manulife Centre.

Oh well. Spilled milk... moving on then.

Tonight was a typical November evening here in Toronto, meaning chilly with an unpleasant drizzly rain. Yech. So I was immediately captivated by two glorious words on the sandwich board outside Sushi Club: Tempura Udon. Perhaps it was just a lingering coveting of my dining companion's udon from last week, but it seemed like the perfect warm-up meal. They thoughtfully served the tempura on the side so you could add it to your bowl one piece at a time and not have it go too totally mushy. My only quibble was with the tempura-battered slice of carrot. What's up with that? That's just weird, man.

But my totally made-up Sushipalooza rules require me to include some maki and/or nigiri in my meal, so I ordered some shitake mushroom rolls. I like mushrooms. I liked these mushroom rolls.

Here's one I haven't seen before: Fried Smoked Salmon Maki. Smoked salmon, cream cheese, bell pepper, and crab, all lightly tempura-battered and deep fried. Yeah, it's as weird as it sounds. But not half-bad, if you're willing to keep an open mind about such things.

I had quite a pile of food to deal with already when the waitress came by with a complimentary bowl of edamame for me. I'm not sure if this was as thanks for switching tables to accommodate a larger party, a (successful) ploy to get me to order a beer to drink with it, or because they saw me unsurreptitiously taking photos of all my food and mistook me for an influential food blogger and thought they'd get a better review if they plied me with free food. If it was the latter, the joke's on them, I get like 6 pageviews a day on this thing!

Oh, and Tokyo Sushi? Sushi Club will see your Patrick Stewart and raise you Christopher Walken!

Week 24: Ichiriki (1.0 km)

2009-10-29T22:10:00.008-04:00

For months now, I've been trying to drag one of my friends along on a Sushipalooza trip. Every week she'd say, "Naw, that place sounds boring. Wake me up when you get to Ichiriki". And here we are! So of course we both came down with swine flu^* at the beginning of the week. Well, no matter, I can put Sushipalooza off until Thursday. It's not like anybody's reading this thing anyway.

We started off with the special-of-the-day appetizer: steamed B.C. clams in a sake broth. They were clamtastic. We also had some shrimp-stuffed mushrooms... similar in concept to something I had at Natural Sushi a few weeks back, but a rather more artful execution. Thinner pieces of mushroom, fluffier shrimp cake, and a light tempura batter.

Appetizers dispensed with, I moved on to my sushi course. I can rarely pass up an unagi-based roll, and Ichiriki's unagi and cucumber roll was better than many. Full of eely goodness! The "dynamite roll" was a fair bit lighter on the fillings than some other versions of seen, but it was very nice nevertheless (and of course I didn't go away hungry). Finally, as I promised (or at least mused) last week, I decided to try Ichiriki's futomaki, to see how it stacked up to Mt. Fuji's. Answer: less colourful, but no less tasty. The tamago (in place of... I forget, maybe the carrot or something?) was a nice touch.

My friend opted to skip the sushi altogether and go for a big bowl of udon. It looked fantastic, topped with seaweed, egg, and tempura shrimp. I'm definitely adding it to my list of "things to eat on a cold day this winter". It cost nearly twice as much as a bowl of ramen from Kenzo, but it would make a great treat once in a while.

Ichiriki is decidedly more upscale than many of it's Yonge St. sushi brethren... must be the Yorkville influence. Anyway, it was definitely worth the wait!

(* - Or else a mild cold. Who can tell these days?)

Week 23: Mt. Fuji (0.9 km)

2009-10-20T21:35:00.005-04:00

This week's Sushipalooza sees me returning to somewhere I haven't been in about 5 years: Mt. Fuji Japanese Restaurant at Gerrard and Bay. I haven't been avoiding it or anything, just, you know... there's a lot of restaurants in this town.

Due to previous TV-related commitments, I took my meal to go. Unfortunately, by the time I got all the way home, got all my food tastefully arranged on proper plates, and spent 10 minutes photographing it, the tempura appetizer had gone a little limp. But the sunomono salad stood up just fine with nice crisp seaweed and tasty bits of fake crab. A little light on the seafood, but not half bad for $3.50.

Mt. Fuji doesn't have quite the selection of oddball maki that I've seen in some places, but I did find a few interesting things, like a flavourful Teriyaki Beef roll. The Tempura Shrimp roll was pretty good too.

But my favourite of the rolls was the Futomaki, packed with colourful crispy veggies and of course the ubiquitous fake crab. It was mighty tasty. I should try Futomaki more often! Though maybe they're not all this good.

It's kinda too bad I couldn't stick around and eat in, because Mt. Fuji is a cute little place, staffed by a cute little couple. But what was I supposed to do, miss Big Bang Theory? I think not.

Week 22: Avocado Salad + Sushi (0.9 km)

2009-10-12T22:09:00.004-04:00

I noticed something interesting today while walking over to Avocado Salad + Sushi at Bay and Charles: a surprising number of restaurants are closed on Thanksgiving Monday. Luckily, Avocado wasn't one of them, because I didn't really have a Plan B for dinner.

As the name suggests, Avocado Salad + Sushi offers a number of interesting salad options in addition to sushi. I tried the "Deluxe" salad, featuring grilled chicken, walnuts, and shitake mushrooms. They called it a "small", but it would've made a pretty adequate lunch on its own.

But I didn't stop at the salad. I also got some unagi (grilled eel) maki, and a "crunchy mushroom" roll: shitake mushrooms topped with tempura bits. It was quite nice; the texture of the tempura bits was a good balance for the tasty but mushroomy mushrooms.

The grand finale of my meal was the signature "Avocado Special Maki". It contained crab stick, avocado, cucumber, asparagus, and mushroom, wrapped in what appeared to be pink rice paper, and topped with a delightfully crunchy mix of tempura bits and spicy salmon. It made for quite an elaborate presentation, and all in all I think it was one of the better house special rolls I've seen lately.

Avocado's menu featured something I don't believe I've seen on any of my previous 21 Sushipalooza visits, or for that matter at any other sushi place I can remember: a "create your own maki" option. Is the Avocado Special Maki not interesting for you? Well then just pick out your own combination of fillings, toppings, and sauces! Salmon, cucumber, tobiko, and spicy mayo? No problem! Shrimp, asparagus, pumpkin, cheddar cheese, and chili sauce? You're the boss! Next time I go, I'll have to experiment a little!

Week 21: Michi (0.9 km)

2009-10-07T20:19:00.004-04:00

Michi is pretty easy to miss. Located on Bond St., on the edge of the Ryerson campus, it's tucked away in a basement, at the end of a long hall behind a copy shop. Casually decked out in mismatched Ikea furnishings, it doubles as a coffee shop and snack bar.

But I'm not here for coffee, I'm here for sushi. From their modest menu, I pick out a bento box. It comes with a nice green salad, some so-so chicken teriyaki, California rolls, 3 pieces of assorted sushi, and "tempura" shrimp which, while quite tasty, bore a somewhat suspicious resemblance to the frozen breaded shrimp they sell at Loblaws. I'm no expert, but I think the sushi itself may have spent some time in a freezer recently too. But being no expert, I don't much care. It was fine.

As is my habit, I rounded out my meal with a "special" maki roll. They have several on the menu, but without descriptions of their contents. I picked one with an enticing picture and an intriguing name: the Grand Canyon. It turned out to contain tempura shrimp (presumably the same stuff that was in the bento, but I'm not sure), avocado, and fake crab, topped with what appeared to be cream cheese, tempura bits, and that sauce that makes spicy tuna rolls spicy. I thought it was pretty good on the whole, although the cream cheese was a bit weird.

I hope Michi has better luck serving the Ryerson community than Sushi Plaza did. Perhaps it's crawling with students at lunch time, but on this particular evening I had the place to myself. If I was going to school there, I'd probably visit Michi for lunch on a fairly regular basis. It may not be anything to write home about, but it's good, it's cheap, and you can eat your lunch while you have your friend's textbook photocopied next door. Perfect!

Extra: Okonomi House (0.9 km)

2009-10-03T22:04:00.004-04:00

Why is it all my "bonus" posts end up being clumped together? Curse you, cruel fate!

Moving on...

Okonomi House is not even remotely a sushi restaurant. I mean, at least Tokyo Grill had California Rolls on the menu. But there's not a scrap of sushi to be found at Okonomi House. So why'd am I wasting your time with this post? Good question.

Okonomi House specializes in okonomiyaki, which is sometimes referred to as "Japanese pizza", because I guess it's sort of pizza-like. It involves a potato pancake topped with sauce and usually some kind of meat or whatever. I decided to go for broke and get the "seafood deluxe", which came with shrimp, scallops, fake crab, and calamari. Clearly this was the way to go; my last okonomiyaki seemed woefully under-topped, but this one did not suffer that problem.

And with that, I'm outta here. Short post, I know, but I really want to get out to Nuit Blanche... I mean it's already 10:30 for crying out loud, what am I doing farting around the house? Seeya!

Extra: Sushi Train (0.9 km)

2009-10-03T21:44:00.006-04:00

Ah, poor Sushi Train. You didn't last long enough to make it in to Sushipalooza. In fact, this place has been closed for about a year now. When it was still around, it was a conveyor belt place, not unlike Toko. (No relation to Winnipeg's Sushi Train.)

I went to Sushi Train once. I made the mistake of grabbing everything tasty-looking that trundled past me, as if it was an all-you-can-eat place. At the end of the meal, I had a stack of plates up to my eyeballs. The bill for two of us came in at just over $100. Oops.

I'm not sure what's in here now... I thought they turned it in to a Korean Grill House, but now that I look at the picture I see KGH is next door. Well I shall have to take a look at that and report back. I know you're all on the edge of your seats.

(UPDATE: The answer is... a shoe store.)

Week 20: Masa (0.9 km)

2009-09-30T23:38:00.005-04:00

I have no idea if Masa was the first place in town to offer all-you-can-eat sushi, but it was certainly the first I was aware of. I remember several years ago -- before there were AYCE sushi joints every other block -- seeing it and thinking it was a novel (if somewhat worrisome) concept.

Luckily, I've had 2 weeks to recover from overstuffing myself on Mariko's all-you-can-eat sushi. I tried to keep things a little more under control this time. A little.

Despite being located in a not-so-luxurious hotel (at Charles and Yonge), Masa boasts one of the swankiest rooms you'll ever have all-you-can-eat sushi in. It looks like the kind of place where you'd expect to pay more than 16 bucks for your meal. Impressive.

Unlike most AYCE sushi places, you can actually order single pieces of maki, not just rolls of 6. This would be a great way to sample a variety of different things, if not for the fact that they only have like 10 rolls to choose from.

From Masa's very limited sushi menu, we ordered... just about everything. On the upside, much of what they do have is right up my alley (BBQ eel, tempura shrimp, fake crab, etc.). They offer somewhat more variety on the non-sushi side, including noodles, dumplings, and various things deep-fried in tempura batter. The yakitori was particularly tasty.

With it's classy decor and good quality at a (very) reasonable price, Masa could be a pretty great destination for AYCE sushi... if not for the woefully tiny card. But hey, if you're not into trying weird things and just want to fill up on standard sushi items -- and there's nothing wrong with that -- Masa's a pretty good deal. I hear they also have one of those things where you sit at the grill and the chef whips up your meal in front of you, which might be fun (in a 1990 sort of way). I didn't check it out though... after all, this is Sushipalooza, not Teppanyakipalooza!

Week 19: Natural Sushi (0.8 km)

2009-09-21T22:24:00.004-04:00

Natural Sushi is located just south of Yonge and Bloor. They have a picture of green leafy plants on their sign, just like the hemp store across the street. You can't miss it.

Natural Sushi actually has a sign in their window advertising all-you-can-eat sushi, but I didn't notice it until after I ordered... and in any case, I'm a little AYCE'ed out after last week. So I was happy enough to just order off the menu.

To that end, I started out with by picking out an appetizer I hadn't had before: urajiro, described as "Japanese mushrooms stuffed with shrimp". They weren't so much stuffed as encased in shrimp cakes, deep fried and served with a dipping sauce. Kind of like Japanese breaded mushroom caps. Right on.

It feels like it's been a while since I had a nigiri-heavy combo, so I picked out one of those. The "Nagoya" came with 6 pieces of nigiri, plus spicy salmon rolls, and a hand roll that I didn't hate as much as I usually hate hand rolls.

I rarely get desert with my sushi meals, but that's only because a lot of sushi places tend to have crap deserts. A key exception to this rule is tempura fried banana. Especially when it comes served with mango ice cream and chocolate sauce (even if the sauce does appear to be Nestle Quik).

Side note: It seems to be a common theme for places to name their special rolls after Toronto streets, but Natural Sushi was the first place I've seen a "QEW Roll". Odd name, but it looked good, in that it contained BBQ eel. Alas, I didn't have room. Next time...

Week 18: Mariko (0.8 km)

2009-09-14T21:32:00.006-04:00

All right, here we go with our first "overtime" instalment of Sushipalooza '09! And as the fates would have it, we get to kick this new season in style (sort of), with our very first all-you-can-eat establishment! I rounded up some family (everybody knows AYCE sushi demands as large a group as possible, so as to sample the most items) and off we went!

Mariko Japanese Restaurant is a chain of sorts; I've seen locations in the Annex and on the Danforth (there may be others, but I couldn't be bothered to do any actual research). The location we visited is on Yonge south of Gerrard, conveniently near the Zanzibar (attention gentlemen: this would make a great first-date combo!)

Naturally, we gorged ourselves hardcore. Let's see how much of this I can remember...

We started off with a tofu appetizer I forget the name of. The tofu-lover loved it, while the tofu-haters turned up their noses. I was kind of in the middle; I like tofu best when it's deep-fried, which this wasn't. Looked pretty though.

We ordered enough maki (and nigiri) to fill a small flotilla of sushi boats. Favourites included the Katsu Chicken roll (breaded chicken), California roll, and Tempura Shrimp roll (are you sensing a pattern?).

Not everyone at the table shares my love of BBQ eel -- or even fake crab stick -- but it all got eaten. So too did the Teriyaki Beef roll, the Dynamite (crab and shrimp) roll, and whatever they brought us when we ordered a "Dragon" roll.

Not pictured (in some cases because it got eaten too quickly): chicken yakitori, crispy chicken katsu, chicken teriyaki that was erroneously delivered the first time we ordered chicken katsu, beef teriyaki that came with a somewhat-too-big bowl of soba noodles in broth, and more tempura shrimp than you can shake a tempura shrimp at.

Now I don't like to slag places, but it must be said that the service we experienced made Toko's service seem attentive and on-the-ball by comparison. I mean, at an all-you-can-eat place you have to kind of expect them to occasionally forget things and ignore you when you want to order more food -- that's how they keep costs down I guess -- but the staff at Mariko took the whole ignoring us thing a little too far. Plus the table was filthy, and they screwed up our bill and charged us for an extra person (which of course they happily but frazzled-ly fixed it was pointed out).

To end this ~~review~~ story on a positive note: a certain member of our party who shall remain nameless ate all the wasabi on a dare, which was hilarious. It's even funnier because I'm not the one who's going to have to listen to him whine about his stomach ache all night. Ha ha!

[UPDATE: Turns out they didn't fix that bill thing after all. Idiots.]

Sushipalooza Summer Wrap-up (Sort Of)

2009-09-07T23:55:00.005-04:00

Wow, can you believe Labour Day has come and gone already? As I'm sure my faithful readers will recall, the original plan for Sushipalooza was to start on Victoria Day with the closest sushi restaurant to my house, then visit the next-closest place each week of the summer and see how far away from home I was on Labour Day. Well, with this week's visit to Asahi on Church, we can finally reveal the answer that we've technically known all along!

(*Cue fanfare*) Ladies and gentlemen, the final results of the Great Sushipalooza Experiment of 2009 are as follows: After 17 weeks of visiting progressively-further sushi restaurants, the maximum distance I have had to walk from my home is...

0.8 kilometres!

That's right, 17 sushi joints within a scant 800 metre walking distance... for you people who prefer wacky old-timey measurements, that's about half a mile, or like 160 rods or something.

Other facts not worth noting:

The Summer of Sushipalooza began and ended with the only two places located on Church St (so far) -- Omi in Week 1 and Asahi in Week 17.
Speaking of things Omi and Asahi uniquely have in common: they both share names with other nearby restaurants; there is another Omi and another Asahi on Carlton St (over 0.8 km away, so I never made it to either).
There are still many other sushi restaurants within the bounds of what can reasonably be referred to as "my neighbourhood".

This last point troubles me. I really wanted an excuse to go to some of those places. And once I get into a nice little rut, I like to stay in it. So I am pleased to make the following big surprise announcement... (*cue fanfare again*) Sushipalooza '09 is going into overtime!

Yup, I'm just going to keep right on visiting local sushi restaurants (still in increasing order of distance, naturally), until I reach some yet-to-be-determined radius, or until I succumb to mercury poisoning, whichever comes first.

How long can I keep this up? How many sushi places can there possibly be within a reasonable walking distance? There's only one way to find out... onward to sushi!

Week 17: Asahi on Church (0.8 km)

2009-09-07T22:19:00.008-04:00

Hello everybody, and welcome to an extra-super-special edition of Sushipalooza!

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that Labour Day marks the official culmination of Sushipalooza '09... but more on that later. To mark this momentous occasion, I teamed up with Todd from Toronto Sushi!, who has also been spending his summer running around town visiting and reviewing sushi restaurants. With some 40 restaurants and counting, scattered all over the city, his approach to the task is obviously more comprehensive but less O.C.D. than my own.

So let's get to it! I know of at least two places named Asahi Sushi; this one is on Church St just south of Bloor, in a converted house with a lovely little front patio, perfect for a Labour Day sushi dinner. (As you are no doubt aware, eating indoors on Labour Day is prohibited by law).

Somehow, with all the not-so-authentic sushi I've eaten this summer, I still hadn't tried a "sushi pizza", which seems to be a staple on most menus. Time to right this wrong! It was pretty good... salmon, tobiko, and cucumber in mayo on a "crust" of crispy fried rice. And mercifully, no cheese.

The first thing that caught my eye on the menu was the "Fuitopia roll", maki containing some unspecified mixed fruits. Weird! I like weird, so I ordered it. Alas, they were out of some key ingredient (pineapples? lychees? plums?), so I had to do a last-minute substitution of Caterpillar roll. Built around BBQ eel, it was declared a hit by my sister (and Sushipalooza co-inventor), so I guess it worked out OK in the end.

Sadly, my picture of the Caterpillar roll didn't turn out because my camera stinks. But here's the Red Dragon roll, which also tasted as good as it looked. Maybe even better, because you can't see the tempura shrimp in this picture.

Of course man can not live by special maki alone, so we also got a couple orders of... slightly more normal maki. Actually, I guess bulgogi maki's not very normal. It was tasty, but a little on the dry side.

As for how Todd and his sister enjoyed their meals, you'll have to read his review to find out!

So that's it! Summer's over, and so is Sushipalooza '09! (Or is it? Hint: no.) So what were the final results? What conclusions did we reach? What important life lessons did we learn? And where do we go from here? Stay tuned for all the exciting answers in the Sushipalooza Summer Wrap-up!

Week 16: Sushi Tower (0.7 km)

2009-08-31T21:47:00.004-04:00

Sushi Tower is the newest of the numerous sushi joints on the Yonge St. strip. If you have a weird feeling I said that about someplace else before, you're right... back in June Takumi was the new kid on the block; Sushi Tower popped up after that, making it the first place to open during the Summer of Sushipalooza.

Sushi Tower is located near Yonge and Gerrard, in what used to be home to KC Wings & Ribs. I didn't go very often (nor did anybody else I guess), but I liked that place. I have 15 closer places to go for sushi, but I don't know of another restaurant around here that serves crispy deep-fried wings in Thai Sweet Chili sauce. Oh well.

Sushi Tower knows what I like; their menu boasts a healthy assortment of "special maki". So I picked myself out a few, starting with a cucumber-wrapped "Kani Salad" roll. It was like a more bite-sized version of a roll I had at Sushi Garden a few weeks back.

Next up was a Mango Roll, with Mango and BBQ eel. Brilliant! More maki should have mango in it. And I always enjoy BBQ eel. Put them together and you've got yourself one fine little roll. No, I don't think it's a weird combo, what are you talking about?

I also got a perennial favourite of mine: the spider roll. The last spider roll I had was a bit of a letdown, but this one fared better. Finally, I tried a Yam Tempura and Avocado roll, which contained exactly that. It was a little bland (not surprisingly I guess), but that's what wasabi is for.

Oh, and I had some Shitake Tempura too. It's like a Japanese version of breaded mushroom caps! Mmm. There's no picture of them, because I was too busy eating them.

Well I'll try not to take out my bitterness at the loss of KC Wings on Sushi Tower. They are a worthy addition to the Yonge St. sushi lineup. Hey, I wonder if they'd start carrying wings if enough people asked?

Week 15: Toko Bistro (0.7 km)

2009-08-25T22:59:00.006-04:00

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.)

Week 14: Tokyo Sushi (0.7 km)

2009-08-18T21:03:00.004-04:00

Here's all you need to know about Tokyo Sushi: they have an autographed photo of Jean-Luc Picard on the wall. If it's good enough for the indisputably awesomest Starfleet captain, it's good enough for me!

Tokyo Sushi is somewhat off the beaten track, hiding down at the Bay St. end of St. Joseph St. Like Solo Sushi Bekkan, I didn't even know it existed until I went looking for it.

Unless my menu was missing a page or something, they didn't seem to have any "bento box" combinations. Well that's fine, all the more excuse to experiment with random maki! My favourite of the bunch was the "Saturday Roll", featuring shrimp and tempura bits.

I also got a "Sunshine Roll", with salmon and asparagus. Not an entirely successful combination, I thought. The "Rainbow Roll", topped with various kinds of fish, fared better. I rounded things off with a couple pieces of tamago (scrambled egg) nigiri.

Tokyo Sushi also offers about the most reasonably priced wakame seaweed salad I've seen... and it was good too. Nice big pieces of dark, crunchy seaweed, garnished with some cute little cucumber slices.

So lay in a course for Tokyo Sushi, warp 3.5. Engage!

(Yeah, I know. Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Week 13: Sushi Hana (0.6 km)

2009-08-10T20:48:00.004-04:00

Well this place has a bit of a complex history. I last visited it about 16 months ago, when it went by the name "Soban" and had a distinctly Korean focus (but with a fair bit of Japanese / sushi on the menu, as I recall). I'm not sure how long it had been open at that point, but it looked fairly new. A few months later, it was reinvented (seemingly overnight) as Witches Table; basically the same food in a ridiculous occult-chic setting. Less than a year later, the owners apparently decided the sure path to success was to dive headlong into the already saturated Yonge St. sushi market, and Sushi Hana was born.

Like last week's nearby Sushi & BBQ, Sushi Hana is a Korean-Japanese hybrid. However Sushi Hana is a little more stylish, the dishes a little fancier, and the prices a little higher.

In keeping with the Korean restaurant tradition (I guess), they brought a couple complimentary appetizers: a tiny bowl of noodles in broth, and a tasty little pastry thing the waitress described as "Korean pizza".

Once again, I went for a bento box anchored by a Korean meat dish, this time Kalbi BBQ ribs, along with veggie and shrimp tempura, gyoza, and some California rolls. I asked the waitress if it came with miso soup and she said no but she'd bring me some anyway, which was nice. My free miso soup was smallish but one of the better miso soups I've had recently. I think the ribs could've stood to be a little less well done, but I guess if I wanted them rare I should've asked for them that way.

Delving into the maki menu, I found the Miami Roll, consisting of crab stick and cucumber topped with unagi (eel) and avocado. I like all those things, so I liked the Miami Roll.

Somehow, the waitress misheard my order of a small Sapporo as "small hot sake". I decided to let it slide, on the grounds that I've always kinda wanted to try hot sake. As an added bonus, it turned out to be cheaper than the beer. But I'll tell you this: small or not, that was more freaking 140-proof rice wine than this lightweight needs in one sitting. I am drunk, man.

I'm not sure what this place is doing wrong, but I had the room entirely to myself until about 10 minutes before I left, when a couple finally wandered in. Hopefully it was just an unusually slow Monday night; otherwise I fear yet another rebranding is in the cards for Soban / Witches Table / Sushi Hana. Might I suggest cook-at-your-table Korean BBQ? That way they'd only be the 5th such place on the strip, instead of 13th-and-counting.

Week 12: Sushi & BBQ (0.5 km)

2009-08-03T22:28:00.002-04:00

All right, I gotta keep this brief, cause I have some kitchen cabinets to paint. Long story. Well, not that long: I'm painting my kitchen cabinets. There.

Sushi & BBQ is on Yonge near Wellesley, mere steps from last week's non-entry, Tokyo Grill. And like Tokyo Grill, they accept cash only. WTF? Is this block like some sort of black hole for credit and debit card service? Anyway.

If there's one thing I like more than sushi, it's BBQ. The name Sushi & BBQ evokes a place where you can get smoked baby back ribs with a side of tempura shrimp roll. The reality is slightly less awesome but still pretty nice: a kind of Korean / Japanese "fusion". They have Korean dishes (like bibimbap), Japanese dishes (like udon), and hybrid dishes (like a bulgogi bento box).

Unfortunately, the lighting in there made my camera very unhappy, and the only picture I got was this poor blurry thing. You can sort of see part of my BBQ Bento Box and my Spider Roll. It looks awful enough in thumbnail size, you don't want to see it large.

The bento box came with Korean BBQ beef, and some glass noodles (nice)... but no miso soup. When's the last time you saw a bento box with no miso soup? No tempura either... well, what can you expect for 8 bucks I guess?

Anyhoo, I gotta get back to work. See you next week!

Extra: Tokyo Grill (0.5 km)

2009-07-30T21:39:00.004-04:00

Yeah that's right: not one but two bonus entries this week! Isn't it amazing? Isn't it almost more excitement than you can bear? Yeah, me too.

I had been originally planning to include Tokyo Grill on the regular Sushipalooza roster, but on closer inspection it turned out not to be a sushi restaurant. They do have a very small selection of sushi on the menu, but the main focus is on teriyaki and donburi and whatnot. The odd thing is I could swear it used to be a sushi restaurant, when I went there like 10 years ago. Either they've rejigged the menu, or my memory's not worth much. The smart money is on "b".

But I wasn't about to let that stop me from visiting and trying out some non-sushi Japanese food. And by posting about it here, I can write off the meal as a business expense on my income tax, right? Remind me to ask my accountant about that.

I decided to get the katsu don, a bowl of rice topped with vegetables, egg, and a breaded fried pork cutlet. Kind of similar to Korean bibimbap (a favourite winter dish of mine), only minus the sizzling bowl. Good stuff.

I supplemented my meal with an order of agedashi tofu. To those who say they don't like tofu, I say: try it deep fried. I liked this better than the tempura tofu I got at Kokyo back in week 2. Less... tofuey.

My favourite thing about Tokyo Grill: they had Christmas decorations up. In July. I can dig that. Why take them down in the first place when you're just going to have to put them back up in 11 months, right?

Extra: Sushi Plaza (0.4 km)

2009-07-29T19:43:00.003-04:00

Well, I'm not going to be going here, obviously. Sushi Plaza would've been next week's Sushipalooza stop... if it hadn't gone out of business, like, a year and a half ago.

I do have fond memories of this place from my university days, not as a sushi restaurant but as a gritty burger joint that was open until 4am and served great french fries. A few years ago the owner retired (or got shot, or indicted, who knows?) and Sushi Plaza took over the space. Apparently sushi was not as popular with the cabbies and prostitutes as burgers were; when I took the picture above, the eviction notice on the door mentioned something like $15,000 in rent arrears. Ouch.

Last time I was by, the "For Lease" signs were gone, and a liquor licence application notice was up. The new place is apparently going to be called Guu Izakaya. So still Japanese, but not sushi. Will it fare better than Sushi Plaza? I'll check it out after it opens and report back! Unless I forget, which I almost certainly will.

Week 11: Sushi Garden (0.4 km)

2009-07-27T22:26:00.006-04:00

Sushi Garden is located just off Yonge on Wellesley. Its 50-foot frontage in eye-catching reflective glass might lead you to believe it's a pretty big place... but it's only about 10 feet deep.

I was in a bento mood again, and Sushi Garden obliged me by having about a dozen different bento combinations on the menu. I went with the D1, which for the princely sum of $10 came fully loaded with teriyaki, gyoza, a couple pieces of breaded calamari, spicy salmon rolls, and a dollop of wakame seaweed salad. I like wakame, but when you order it as a separate side you always get a freaking ton of it. So this worked out quite nicely, just enough to enjoy.

The bento also came with the usual green salad (better-than-average dressing) and miso soup (non-dehydrated-looking tofu and seaweed were a nice touch, but the broth was a touch bland).

I ordered beef teriyaki, then after the server left I thought "darn, I wish I ordered chicken instead, I kind of feel like chicken now that I think about it". But I didn't bother trying to change my order. And what did they bring me? Chicken teriyaki! Indisputable conclusion: the servers at Sushi Garden are freaking psychic!

And of course I can never resist exploring the special maki menu. I got an imaginatively-named "Shrimp Crab & Cucumber Roll". Guess what was in it? There was one slight surprise: the cucumber was on the outside.

Compared to Daio, Sushi Garden was pretty easy on the wallet. And check this out: $3 domestic and $4 "Japanese" beers. So if you're ever looking for a $3 beer in a place with better ambience than Mr. Tasty Burger, here's another option for you.

I will just close by saying this: I eat slow. After I ordered, somebody else came in, sat down, ordered, ate, paid, left, then another person came in and did the same thing, and also got out of there a good 10 minutes before I did. Of course they didn't screw around taking pictures of their food...

Week 10: Sushi on the Run - College Park (0.4 km)

2009-07-20T20:40:00.006-04:00

Sushi on the Run is not a restaurant. There's no sushi chef on premises, and they don't (so far as I know) serve any hot food. It's just a little shop equipped with a cooler full of pre-made items. They have a number of locations (er, the number might be two); this one is in the passage connecting College Park to the subway station, across from the Cinnabon. Fine dining this ain't.

I think Sushi on the Run mostly caters to the office drones at lunch time; by dinner time all their sushi is "buy one get one free", which makes it a pretty economical meal.

I got myself a "Golden Dragon", with fake crab salad or something on the inside and slices of salmon on the outside. Given that this was end-of-day food court sushi, I wasn't surprised to find that some of the salmon was a little discoloured and fishy-smelling. Most of it was OK, but I tossed a couple of pieces.

My "free" box contained 4 pieces each of California roll and BBQ eel nigiri. Both were serviceable but unspectacular.

I also got a box of gyoza. Nobody likes cold gyoza, so I warmed them up in the microwave, which worked out slightly better than you might expect. They were labelled as "veg.", but they certainly appeared to contain meat. If I were a vegetarian I might be annoyed, but I actually saw it as a bonus.

I'm sure Sushi on the Run must be seeing some stiff lunch competition from Sushi Shop, which offers a much wider variety (and better quality, based on my unscientific survey) in about the same price range. But if you're looking for sushi at dinner time, and want it fast, and want it cheap, Sushi on the Run's BOGO deal is pretty hard to beat.

Week 9: Daio Sushi (0.4 km)

2009-07-14T22:04:00.005-04:00

Man, things are pretty tight these past few weeks... I actually thought I wasn't going to hit Daio until Week 11, until I mapped out a shorter walking route that shaved about 30 metres off the distance, vaulting it up to this week. Oh, the drama!

Yes, of course I'm a nerd.

Anyway, I remember going to Daio shortly after it first opened, years ago. I'm not sure that I've been back since. Not that I had anything against it, just never got around to it.

Daio joins Solo Sushi Bekkan as one of the more formal (and pricey) sushi joints in the Yonge-Carlton Sushi Axis. The inside is all mood lighting and paper-walled booths, but since I finally hit a patio-equipped restaurant on a day when the weather wasn't god-awful, outside seemed like the place to be.

I started off my meal by trying something new: Chowanmushi. It's a kind of steamed custard deal filled with bits of seafood. It was quite good, a welcome change from the usual tempura veggie appetizers (as much as I like tempura).

For my entree, I went with the Sushi Combo B. Being the sushi expert that I am, I could identify maybe 6 or 7 of the 10 items. Could that actually be real crab meat? At the very least, it's high quality fake crab meat. I don't really care which; it was good. Nice generous portions of all the fish too.

The waitress said they had very good teriyaki sauce, and my dining companion concurred. The teriyaki chicken came on a sizzling iron dish, combining the flavour of fine Japanese dining with the pizazz of Kelsey's fajitas. Rad.

With this week's entry, we are now officially more than half way through Sushipalooza '09. Only 8 more weeks 'til Labour day! Will I ever make it to a place I couldn't hit with a California roll hurled from my balcony? Time will tell!

Week 8: Daily Sushi (0.4 km)

2009-07-07T20:36:00.004-04:00

Daily Sushi is another relatively established contender in the ever-growing lineup of sushi places along the Yonge Street Strip. I think I remember it being there at least 10 years ago. Maybe. It's location right next to the Carlton Cinema makes it perfect for dinner-and-movie outings. Of course, if you live right around the corner and have an hour to kill between dinner and movie, you can run home and blog about your dinner first. But that would be way lame.

Like much of its Yonge Street competition, Daily Sushi sports a casual atmosphere and a ridiculously varied menu. Raw fish not your bag? They've got all sorts of meals based on grilled meat and/or noodles. "Rare beef sushi"? Check. Not one but two kinds of fried calamari appetizers? Check. Plenty to choose from.

But you can't eat it all, so I picked a couple of the more interesting maki varieties, and just one of the fried calamari variants ("Tempura Squid"). Oh, and a really salty miso soup and some surprise complimentary edamame.

The "Daily Sushi Roll" (which seems to be called the "Katsu Roll" in the take-out menu, for some reason) consists of BBQ eel, cucumber, and avocado. You had me at BBQ eel. (Oddly, they also have a "BBQ eel roll", which appears to be the same thing, minus the avocado). How can you top that? How about with a "Fresh Mango Salmon Roll", with mango and crab stick, topped with raw salmon? Pretty good for something without any deep fried ingredients.

My dining companions also had some sort of teriyaki-based bento box, some sashimi, and a grilled beef thing of some sort. I didn't specifically solicit opinions on them, but I didn't see anybody vomiting outside the restaurant so I guess it must've been OK.

Well if you'll pardon me, I have to run back out to catch my movie. Hey, there's a Japanese film playing, maybe I should make it a theme night...

Week 7: Sushi Shop (0.4 km)

2009-07-04T17:01:00.004-04:00

Better late than never, I now present this (past) week's vacation-delayed instalment of Sushipalooza!

Apparently Sushi Shop is a fairly major chain in Montreal. Earlier this year they opened their first Toronto location at Carlton and Yonge. It has a distinctly fast-food vibe; they do have a small dining room but I don't think they offer table service. They also don't have a patio, and since it's a lovely mid-May afternoon (in early July), I did the only sane thing: got my meal to go and ate it on my balcony.

Sushi Shop's menu consists almost entirely of maki, with a few standard varieties of nigiri / sashimi. Notably absent are bento boxes, teriyaki, and noodle-based dishes. If ordering off the menu is too much time and effort, you can grab one of their pre-made "express combos" from the cooler. So I did.

The $10 Combo G included salmon and shrimp nigiri, 2 each of Boston, Dynamite, and Spicy Salmon Crunch rolls, and what the menu referred to as "chef's choice" of small maki. Today the chef chose to include some slightly wilted avocado rolls.

My favourite of the bunch was the Boston Roll, with crab stick, shrimp, and cucumber. The Dynamite (tempura shrimp, avocado, cucumber) and Spicy Salmon Crunch were also quite nice.

Since the combo didn't come with the usual miso soup and green salad, I opted to augment it with a wakame seaweed salad. I like seaweed salad, and this one was perfectly good, but I could've done with about half the portion I was given. It's more than enough for sharing.

Sushi Shop is clearly taking aim at the take-out lunch market, and their quality and selection certainly seems to be a step up from the food court. It'd be a good place for a quick casual bite, or to pick up supplies for a summer sushi picnic. If you're looking for a hot sit-down meal, you might want to try one of the other kajillion sushi restaurants in the neighbourhood.

Special: Sushi Train, Winnipeg MB (2,130 km)

2009-06-29T22:37:00.003-04:00

This week's regular installment of Sushipalooza is going to be delayed by a few days, as I am on vacation in beautiful Manitoba. But to ensure I remain in top sushi-eating form, I took time out from my trip to pay a visit to Winnipeg's Sushi Train. I believe there are several locations; the one we went to was in The Forks market area downtown.

Coincidentally, Sushi Train shares a name with a now-defunct establishment back in my home neighbourhood. Toronto's Sushi Train had a conveyor belt running around the room carrying plates of sushi, but Winnipeg's Sushi Train takes the gimmick quite literally, running an actual O-scale train around the sushi bar. They actually weren't running it when we came in, but after my adorable nephew asked nicely, they used it to deliver our order. The kids were delighted.

Being a gimmicky sushi joint in a tourist neighbourhood, I expected Sushi Train to be outrageously expensive, but it was actually surprisingly affordable. Dirt cheap, even. Most of the menu items fall under the $5 mark. Fine dining this ain't.

Cheap and dubiously authentic or not, it was all pretty good. With a party of kids and inadventurous eaters, we steered away from the toro sashimi and stuck with the types of maki that cause sushi purists to protest, "That's not sushi!". Shaddup, sushi purists. Some of us like Teriyaki Chicken rolls. In fact, we liked it so much somebody snapped up part of it before I could get a picture of it.

In the end, a good time was had by all, for the princely sum of about 10 bucks a head. Certainly the most entertaining Sushipalooza outing so far. Choo choo!

Week 6: Sushi Supreme Fusion (0.3 km)

2009-06-22T22:28:00.004-04:00

This is the place that started it all... the place I was walking past all those months ago when the idea for Sushipalooza was born. Unfortunately, as was the case with Takumi, by the time I actually got to Sushi Supreme Fusion, the "grand opening" special advertized in the picture above was gone. (Incidentally, another sushi place has opened up nearby this very week, and is of course currently offering a grand opening discount. Will I actually make it to this one before the offer expires? We'll find out in, like, 20 weeks!)

Sushi Supreme Fusion took over the spot vacated by Sunset Grill near Yonge and Wellesley. Given the crumminess of the sign out front, I was rather surprised by the sleek stylishness of their large, bright dining room. The centrepiece, across from the sushi bar, is a large boat-shaped table, complete with ornamental mast. Go with a party of 10 and request -- nay, demand -- to be seated at the boat!

I decided to be kind to my pocketbook resist the temptation to order a whole bunch of items. I really prefer to sample a variety of weird maki, but it's a little hard when you're dining alone. I need more friends, is what I need. But I digress.

So I got a "Sushi Bronze" combo. It contained all the usual suspects, plus a salmon hand roll. Hand rolls are a pain in the butt to eat, I find. I usually try to avoid them, but whatever. Aside from a general dislike for hand rolls, my only complaint with the Sushi Bronze was that the salad was freakin' swimming in dressing. Everything else was perfectly fine.

As an accompaniment, I ordered the intriguingly named "UFO". It's tempura eggplant topped with spicy tuna. Anything with tempura is pretty muck OK by me, but to be honest I didn't much care for the flavour of the spicy tuna. I think spicy tuna is the kind of thing that's better enjoyed in smaller doses than what was presented here.

My biggest regret about Sushi Supreme Fusion was that I didn't order the "Negima Yaki" pictured on the front of their take-out menu. Enoki mushrooms wrapped in grilled steak. Hell yeah. If that's not on the menu at the next place I visit, I may have to pop back in to S.S.F. for a quick snack some day... that wouldn't be breaking the rules, would it?

Week 5: Sushi Sky (0.3 km)

2009-06-15T22:23:00.004-04:00

Hello, and welcome to a very special Family Edition of Sushipalooza! This week I had the 3 sushi-eatingest members of my family join me at Yonge St. sushi stalwart Sushi Sky. A mere 2 doors down from upstart Takumi, Sushi Sky has been there for as long as I can remember (however long that is), and is only the second Sushipalooza stop that I've been to before.

Unfortunately, there was a minor tragedy with the food photos. My camera did not seem to appreciate the lighting conditions in there. Guess I should have taken my sister up on her offer to borrow hers. Oh well. I was able to salvage some semi-usable thumbnails, but no larger view. Sorry!

To kick things off, we have the house-special "Sushi Sky Maki", topped with smoked salmon, BBQ eel, and avocado. Oh yeah, and shrimp I think. So pretty much the works. Makes for a fancy presentation, and anything with BBQ eel on it is a winner in my books. All it was missing was something fried. Speaking of which...

Here we (sort of) see the Dragon Roll A. Despite the fact that it didn't come arranged in a dragon shape like the picture in the menu, this one was a big hit. It contains tempura shrimp, which pretty much makes it the next best thing to a Spider Roll.

To round the meal off, we got a selection of... more maki. There was unagi (BBQ eel, as good on the inside of the roll as on the outside), cuttlefish (just for the sake of trying something different), and some Dynamite Rolls (to my disappointment, they didn't contain real dynamite).

I guess the clever thing to do would've been to ask around the table for some opinions I could post here. Oh well. I liked it enough, anyway. Besides, these write-ups aren't supposed to be reviews anyway. So get off my back already!

Week 4: Takumi Sushi House (0.3 km)

2009-06-08T20:33:00.004-04:00

Takumi was so close to being in week 3... I actually paced off the distance, and Solo was about 5 steps closer. If Takumi had put their door on the other side of the store, it could have made all the difference! (Or no difference at all, depending on your point of view).

Takumi Sushi House is (for now, at least) the newest contender in the Yonge St. sushi foray, having just opened a couple weeks before the official kick-off of Sushipalooza '09. Unfortunately, by the time I got to them the "Grand Opening" banner pictured above had disappeared, and the 20% off special along with it. They still offer a 15% discount, but only on take-out... a restriction that escaped my notice until the bill came. Oops.

Takumi's menu motto seems to be "an embarrassment of riches". It lists 40-odd appetizers, and that's not including tempura, soup, and salad, each of which have their own section. Add to that over a dozen bento boxes, about 50 varieties of maki, a couple dozen sushi sets and combos, plus various meat, noodle, and "Japanese curry" dishes, and you have some deciding to do.

So of course I ordered a teriyaki beef bento box. What can I say, I'd been craving the various elements all day. It was pretty par for the course... boring salad, decent tempura (though some of the pieces were unmanageably large). The beef was perfectly grilled to a nice rare pink. I've had better gyoza.

I also got what seems to be one of their "signature" rolls, the Clock Tower Crystal roll (named for a feature of the building, not any clock-tower-like attributes of the roll itself). It was pretty good, but a little on the diminutive side for $8.50 if you ask me.

Opening a sushi joint on this strip is a risky -- or foolhardy -- gambit, but Takumi seemed to be doing fairly steady business on a grim Monday evening. All in all, I'd say it would be worth a return visit, if for no other reason than to explore the menu a little more. If you have a craving for variety, Takumi might be just the ticket.

Week 3: Solo Sushi Bekkan (0.3 km)

2009-06-01T20:47:00.005-04:00

I can't believe this place has been hiding right under my nose this whole time! It's right around the corner from me, but I didn't really notice it was there until I started doing a thorough inventory of local sushi establishments. This is probably because it's a tiny little place (might seat 12 in a pinch), located on Grosvenor St. and only visible from Yonge if you're looking. Perhaps it's popular at lunch time with YMCA patrons? If it's not, it should be. I'm going to go ahead and call this place a "hidden gem".

The menu included clippings from a rave review of a place in Newmarket called Solo Sushi Ya, which this place is apparently an offshoot of. According to the web site, they only opened about 8 months ago, so I guess they haven't been flying under my radar for that long. Still.

Some of the items on the menu were a little pricier than at some of the numerous sushi dives on the Yonge St. strip, but quite reasonable overall and great value. I mean, sure you can get a $10 bento somewhere else, but your salad's gonna be a chunk of iceberg lettuce with crappy dressing on it. I think I can safely say this was the best salad I've ever been served with a sushi combo. Off to a good start!

I got the "Sushi King" combo (you can see the whole thing below). It included a couple of fish items I'm too dumb to identify, and did not include the ubiquitous Fake Crab Stick sushi. Don't get me wrong, I like fake crab stick, but something tells me it's not very authentic. It also included some very tasty spicy tuna (I think :P) rolls.

Since they have the word "solo" right there in the name, I was all set to go it alone on this one, but at the last minute I managed to coerce someone to go with me again. All the better to sample more menu items! Here we have Salmon Avocado Roll and Shrimp Tempura Roll, both of which got the thumbs-up.

Just as we were leaving, they cooked up what smelled like an order of yakitori for someone. It smelled freaking awesome. Now I want to go back for yakitori, but I kind of have my sushi plate full (so to speak) for the next few months. So I have an assignment for all you legions of loyal readers of this blog: go visit this place and help them stay afloat in Toronto's fickle restaurant business, at least until I get a chance to go back! You won't regret it!^*

(* Management assumes no responsibility for your regrets.)

Week 2: Kokyo Sushi (0.2 km)

2009-05-25T20:57:00.004-04:00

Now this place I've been to a few times. They have a nice big patio facing a quiet side street (well, quiet except for the subway grate right beside it), which is lovely in the summer. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite summery enough today, so I had to settle for take-out. Alas.

The problem with take-out is that instead of getting your sushi served on a little boat-shaped wooden tray, you get it in a crappy plastic box. Well, I'm not an animal, so I decanted my sushi onto my own little tray before eating it. It's no wooden boat, but it's better than nothing.

I believe they called this "Sushi Combo B". It was about 14 bucks, including your run-of-the-mill green salad and miso soup. I'm sure you (whoever you are) can identify these at least as well as I can; in addition to all the things I personally didn't eat last week, it looks like we've got some calamari, some octopus, and some... fish. I dunno, probably talapia or something. Except I'm sure these all have Japanese names. Then we round it all out with some salmon and California rolls.

I also got some Tempura Tofu. On the scale of Enjoyable Ways to Eat Tofu, with 10 being those things you sometimes get in Korean restaurants with the red chilli sauce and 1 being the milkshakes your dad makes you drink when you're 8 years old and you break your jaw and can't chew anything, I'd say Kokyo's tempura tofu rates about a 6. Passable, but a little on the soft and bland side, as tofu is wont to be.

And that's that. Pretty good, all in all. Hard to fairly compare with last week, since I ordered different stuff and ate it in the iffy ambience of my kitchen, but whatever. This blog isn't about subjective comparisons and useful recommendations, remember? It's about wasting my time and yours. So mission accomplished!

Week 1: Omi on Church (0.1 km)

2009-05-18T15:33:00.013-04:00

I just want to preface all this by saying that I am neither a restaurant critic nor a sushi connoisseur, so I'm not actually going to be writing reviews of these places per se. Just, you know, rambling, uninformative reports. To be crystal clear: this blog contains no information of any value. Thank you.

All right then. Let's get this show on the road!

Oddly enough, even though I'm practically right next door to this place, I've never actually been here before. Probably because I don't get out much. So I get to start the summer off with something new. Yay!

A few months ago, the original owner and/or chef sold this place and opened a new restaurant a few blocks away. Not very far at all, really, but far enough that I won't make it there for months, if at all. It may be interesting to see how they compare. I hear the new place is a lot fancier.

I expect most of my Sushipalooza excursions will be solo jaunts for take-out, but this being a special occasion and all, I brought along a dining companion... and not just any dining companion, but an actual Japanese person! Would she be impressed by the cuisine at this "Japanese & Thai" restaurant? We'll find out...

Not being one to break with tradition, I went with a standard "Medium Bento Box". Big pile of tempura (I love that stuff), some nice healthy fried gyoza, the usual cucumber and salmon rolls. Not too shabby for 10 bucks.

My dining companion's "Small Sushi Combo". Let's see here, we've got your tuna, your shrimp, your salmon, your yummy fake crab stick, whatever that red and white thing is that's in every single sushi combo. Hey, those cucumber and salmon rolls look familiar.

One of my favourite crazy maki varieties is the Spider Roll. It combines the goodness of deep-frying with the exotic look of little legs sticking out of your food. Fantastic! Unfortunately, the picture's all blurry, but you kinda can't tell if it's small enough.

So that's Omi! Not a bad start to Sushipalooza, I'm thinking. I'll leave the final verdict to our guest critic: "Out of 5 stars, I give it 3. Maybe 3 and a half". Sounds fair to me!

Update: Well, at least someone managed to get a decent picture of the spider roll!

Coming Soon: Sushipalooza '09!

2009-05-16T17:16:00.003-04:00

It all started a few months ago, when the Sunset Grill on Yonge St. closed down, and was replaced with a "Coming Soon" sign for a new take-out sushi place. And I thought to myself, "Another one? This neighbourhood's already got like... say, how many sushi places are there around here anyway?" I figured you could eat at a different sushi joint every day for quite some time without straying beyond a comfortable walking distance.

Based on a suggestion from Karen, I decided to turn this into an actual experiment. The methodology goes something like this:

On Victoria Day, visit the closest sushi place to my house.
Each week, continue to visit nearby sushi places in increasing order of distance
On Labour Day, note my final distance from home

Of course I could easily determine the answer right now without actually going to all these places, but what fun would that be? Also, I'd lose the chance to answer some other important questions, such as: How long will it take me to get tired of sushi and abandon this ridiculous project? How long until I get food poisoning? Will all the places currently operating actually make it the whole summer before they buckle under their collective weight and implode?

Check back every week to find out the answers!