Week 22: Avocado Salad + Sushi (0.9 km)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.]