Jun Jun Sushi

Jun Jun Sushi
372 College St.

Edit: April 9th 2010. With paper covering the windows, this restaurant appears to have closed.

“Hi, my name is Todd and I have a sushi problem.” Sometimes I think I should preface every post here with this sentence. I find now that when I go anywhere and I know I’m not in any sort of a rush I bring my camera with me. Why? Because I might just encounter a sushi restaurant along the way. Case in point, on Sunday I needed to hit College St to pick up a new sound card for my HTPC. I actually didn’t consult Google or anything to see if there was a sushi place nearby Canada Computers, but as it turns out there’s at least 2. I grabbed my new hardware and headed a few doors down to Jun Jun Sushi.

It’s a curious place, thats for sure. Not only a restaurant, but a small hotel as well. But aside from that it appears to be very much a Kensington/U of T sort of place. For one thing the sign in front shows that the place is open until 3am nearly every night.  A quick glance at the menu and the decor confirmed it. Simple, and cheap. I was actually fairly impressed with the menu, a pretty wide range of rolls and sushi, all at very reasonable prices.

I decided on trying the Crunchy Roll ($4.75) with Salmon, Avocado, Tempura, and Tobiko and the Salmon pizza at $6.25. The food again met my initial impressions head on. Cheap and Simple. But a surprisingly good value. The Crunchy Roll had a generous amount of Salmon, and a huge chunk of Avocado.  This actually left it a little bit bland, as avocado doesn’t exactly have a striking flavour. The tempura was there, but I would have traded a bit of the avocado for a bit more tempura. Still, for under $5 I got a lot more than I expected. Not heavy on the rice and light on the contents.

The Salmon Pizza left almost exactly the same impression. A little bland, but a great value. Again, I was surprised by the generosity of the ingredients. $6.25 is nearly $1 less than the usual price, and instead of getting a paper thin slice, there was a nice thick layer of salmon on top of a rice patty that wasn’t 2″ thick. Nor was it thin either. Just like the 3 bears, it was just right. However, it was a little bland. The one thing that was missing was the tiny amount of onion that it usually comes with. Simple, plain, and cheap.

A quick look at the lunch specials reveals that they’re probably a really good value as well. I’d have to give this place a thumbs up. The food was fresh and well made, if a little bland. But the price can’t be beat! I’m actually a little morbidly curious to see what this place is like on a Friday at 2am…