So Saturday was some “back to school” shopping for Todd. Of course, a couple of new pairs of jeans and a book about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan for a guy nearly 40 probably doesn’t count as back to school shopping, but it did get me out to Yonge st. Yonge is another of the sushi strips in the city, and up north of college you can’t throw a rock without hitting someones Maki combo.
The first thing that I noticed when opening the menu was that they offered Omakase. Wikipedia defines this as: “The expression is used at sushi restaurants to leave the selection to the chef.” I’ve never actually tried it myself, but one of these days I’ll give it a whirl at a fancy restaurant. The rest of the menu showed a pretty wide variety of Japanese fare, so the name is slightly deceiving, it’s not just a sushi house.
I went for a ubiquitous favorite, the Salmon Pizza ($6.95) and a variation on a favorite. A Black Spider roll ($9.95) which differs from the usual by adding garlic and spicy mayo. Sadly the addition of the garlic was a bad choice. It completely annihilated the flavour of any other ingredient in the roll. Though I wasn’t terribly impressed with the soft shelled crab either, as after having cleansed the palate, I pulled some out of the roll and found it to be bland and mealy. The Salmon pizza was well done though. The salmon slices themselves could have been a little more generous, the rice patty was fried to perfection and the mayo and sauce was not overdone or missing!
The waitress was a little harried with a couple of larger groups, but the service was pretty good. I’d place this as one of the better “stop for lunch” class places. I’d visit again!
Ah, a Saturday that promises rain. What better way to spend the lunch hour than taking your time eating a nice sushi lunch and reading a book? Well, I couldn’t think of one, so I put on my shoes and headed toward Eglinton. I know there’s a few places I haven’t visited yet, including one that was still under construction…
But under construction no more! Nice interior, and a pretty darn interesting menu. Not just the usual maki, but a fair bit Japanese fare. Wow, what a bad sentence. The first thing that jumped out at me was a Lobster Tempura Roll ($7.98). While it was a little anemic when it came to contents, the lobster was very fresh. We’re talking the tempura hadn’t even had time to cool yet, it was deliciously warm. Deliciously tasting too. Lobster is one of the few foods I know for darn certain when it’s prepared well or not. This lobster was really quite good. Far better than I expected. Next up was the ubiquitous Salmon Pizza ($7.98). This was also very well done, the rice patty was fried just a bit more than “usual” which was nice, and the generous amount of spicy mayo, tempura flakes, salmon, and avocado was just right. There really isn’t an way to make it “wrong” (unless you put cheese on it!) but this was probably in the top 5-10 for me.
It also gave me a chance to try out the camera in my new iPhone 4, so if the snaps aren’t up to the usual quality, there you go. But I quite like N.K. I can definitely state that I’ll be back here for lunch!
How do you know when you’ve been incredibly busy, almost too busy to breathe? When you’ve had a sushi review sitting on your hard drive for nearly 2 weeks and you haven’t found time to post it. While biking through my neighborhood, I discovered that one of the hole in the wall greasy spoons had been replaced by a sushi joint. This speaks to me, and I made a point of visiting it at the end of July.
Kokoro isn’t a fancy place, and it isn’t in an upscale area of the city, but you notice that there has to be something good about it when people come out to a god awful strip mall to get sushi. On Marlee. Really. It was surprisingly busy, but the food was pretty darn good and the pricing wasn’t bad either.
I went for a staple and a stand by this time, with the usual Spicy Tuna at $4.50 and a Green Dragon at $8.99. The presentation was better than I expected (my expectations were low, this *was* formerly a greasy spoon) and the fish was very fresh. The spicy tuna was a little on the bland side, but nothing wrong with it. The Green dragon had perfectly sliced layers of avocado, and most importantly the tempura shrimp inside was far better than average.
The service was prompt, and there were a lot of people taking advantage of the 10% off for take out orders. The next time I have an evening sushi craving I may just visit this place rather than head down to Eglinton. Thumbs up for a fast food style sushi restaurant!
This is probably the first of whats going to become more of a staple around here, the 5 minute quickie review. Most places like this are in the “Food Court Sushi” category, and Quik Sushi is no exception.
Last weekend the Sister, myself, and a friend visiting from Berlin went out on a bike ride. It was decided that we’d have breakfast at the St. Lawrence Market on the way to our adventure. While the others went for Vegan raw food, I found Quik Sushi and after a quik peruse (hah!) grabbed a couple of rolls for a cheap brunch. Personally, I have no problem with el-cheapo sushi as long as it’s priced accordingly and the ingredients were at least fresh when the rolls were made. For $5.95 each I grabbed a Spicy Tuna and a Crab roll and was pleasantly surprised. It was food court quality, and was made hours previously, but the rice was good, and the fish was fresh. The tempura crunch in the spicy tuna roll suffered from the soggies after being in the cooler, but it didn’t detract that much.
Both were 8 piece rolls, and I wound up stuffing myself and was grateful for adding 40 more kilometers on my bike that day. Worth checking out for fast fuel on a weekend morning while getting the groceries!
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