Week 20: Masa (0.9 km)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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!