Sushipalooza '09: The Year in Review

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.