Bonus: Sushi Inn (1.5 km)

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)

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: Tokyo Kitchen (0.9 km)

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.)

Special: Golden Maki, Newmarket ON (52 km)

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)

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)

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!)