Sushi Garden

Sushi Garden
30 Eglinton Ave W

Hello world. It’s been over a week. Have you missed me? Well, you may not have missed me, but I certainly missed having sushi. But what screams a Canadian thanksgiving weekend louder than sushi? I know, traditionalists are going to give us noise about turkey, but I didn’t see any turkey teriyaki rolls, so I’ll just leave that to Jon at Sushipalooza.

With a little bit of forethought, I went out into the bright sunshine this afternoon with my camera. I didn’t specifically go out with sushi in mind, but it was a gorgeous day, just about lunch time, and I certainly wasn’t going to spend it all indoors. I needed to pick up a few things from Future Shop over at Yonge and Eglinton, so I figured if I found a place I’d hit it. If not, so be it.

By such a strange co-incidence I managed to run into a place before I even got my shopping started. You never really notice just how many sushi places there are in this city until you start actively looking. I’m beginning to wonder how so many can survive. We must be a city of ravenous crab stick eaters. With even more luck there was a seat available right in the window so I was able to take advantage of the natural sunlight for optimal photography goodness. A quick perusal of the menu tells me that this is more of a general Japanese restaurant with plenty of Teriyaki, Udon, etc to go along with both Nigiri and Maki sushi. There were plenty of combos and specials to choose from, but I went with my tried and true method of random maki selection.

By an even stranger coincidence, someone I met recently was extolling the virtues of a Spicy Avocado roll, describing the japanese mayo and tempura flakes and generally making me hungry over the phone. While desperately trying to choose between a couple of dozen rolls, this one jumped right out at me. A whopping $5.99 for a huge hunk of avocado with spicy mayo and tempura. It was excellent, a little bit too mushy in texture, but that might be easily remedied by more tempura. Still, it was delicious with an interesting teardrop shape and presentation. It was also a nice treat to have the nori on the outside.

After having the Spider roll at Hosu last week, I decided to see what this place made of it. To a certain extent, deep fried soft shelled crab is deep fried soft shelled crab. But Sushi Garden brought back my faith by delivering a generous helping of the crab. At $9.95 it was the same price, but I’d have to say a better value. The one thing that struck me about both rolls was the absolutely perfect amount of rice. Not too much, not too little. It’s nice to fill up on sushi and not be hungry again a few hours later because most of it was white rice.

This is proof, however, that you can have a perfectly good sushi lunch and avoid any notion of it being healthy. Avocado and Mayo loaded with fatty goodness, and deep fried crab with lots of tobiko, which must be nearly pure salt. Still, I imagine it must be better for me than a cheeseburger, but I’m not in a huge rush to find out precisely.

The restaurant itself was nice enough, clean without being fancy. The service was quick and unobtrusive. The overall atmosphere was humble, friendly, and un rushed. It still surprises me that no-one ever raises an eyebrow when I bring out the camera and start snapping away. Nothing jumps out that screams “You must come back here!” but I definitely had a good lunch at a pretty affordable price!