Aji Sai

Aji Sai
467 Queen Street W

So over the weekend I was trolling a few blog sites trying to find new ideas for sushi places to eat. I have my own stand by of just walking down any street and picking one at random, but how about visiting a place that others think highly of? Well, someone mentioned that Aji Sai was good, it’s close to where I work, so I grabbed a few guys from the office and out we headed.

It seems to be primarily an all you can eat place, at least at lunch time, as the menus we were given basically only covered the all you can eat stuff. The only drawback to this is that there were no descriptions of the rolls. Suited me just fine, I ordered a pair at random with a “lets see what we get!” sort of attitude. The guys ordered salmon, deep fried tofu, teryaki chicken, miso, and tempura vegetables for starters. I only had the chicken, and while it wasn’t bad, a majority of it went uneaten.

The rolls were essentially ordered at random, I know there was Spicy Salmon, Avocado, Black Dragon, Rock ‘n Roll, and Firehouse ordered. I’ll concentrate on the few that I ordered or had more than 1 piece of.  First there was the Firehouse (Shrimp Tempura, and Banana, topped with salmon, and tempura bits.) This was pretty good, and the first bite in I was like “Is this banana?” You bet it was. Interesting combination adding a bit of extra sweetness with the same general texture as avocado. Second was the Rock ‘n Roll (Salmon, cucumber, and tobiko, deep fried in tempura). I admit that I picked this one simply for the funky name. I’ve never had a deep fried roll before, and it was a nice change, being warm instead of cold. Definitely more filling than the usual roll, maybe a signal sent to the brain because it was cooked. I also had some of the Black Dragon roll (Shrimp tempura, avocado, and cucmber, topped with unagi). I like unagi, but only in small doses as it’s rather fishy and fatty tasting. The roll itself was really quite good though. Just the right amount of tempura batter covering the shrimp. You could tell it was there, but it wasn’t overpowering.

Pretty nice place too, stylish without being stuffy. The place does get busy at lunch though, and once it does the service slows right down. Took the better part of 15 minutes to get them to take and process the plastic. But I could see they were concentrating on getting the food out to other people, so I can understand.

I didn’t see a regular menu to tell what the individual prices are, but at $10.99 a head we certainly got our moneys worth.