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!

Update: Mariko

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]

Week 26: Asahi on Carlton (1.0 km)

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.

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 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.]