Aoyama Sushi

I love Japanese food and it's something I never get bored of. I don't mind having Japanese food every single day. One advantage of being in Toronto is there are a lot of decent Japanese restaurant.

Aoyama sushi is my current favorite since it's so close work. It's only 10 minutes drive from work so  it  became my go-to weekday restaurant. It's close to Le Cafe Michi but it seems that it's easier to get a reservation at Aoyama. I haven't tried every single item from their menu but the following set is definitely one of my favorite.

You start off with their seafood soup. They put the soup in the teapot and you pour the soup into tiny bowls. After you finished the soup, you can open the cover and eat the seafood inside the pot. 

You then get some Japanese appetizers. I'm never a big fan of their appetizers. I prefer their sashimi and sushi. 

For the sushi in this set, you get 4 pieces of toro, 2 pieces each of the following fishes- Hamachi belly, salmon belly, snow crab leg, egg, scallop, amaebi, uni, eel and a set of salmon rolls. 

Their sashimi is fresh, they offer one of the best hamachi belly in town. The toro is impressive, one of the better toro offered in town at a decent price.   

Jabistro tasting menu

Jabistro is one of the newer Japanese restaurants in town. It is one of the hype restaurants and it seemed like a lot of people like it. But is it worth the hype? I don't think so. I've had one of the worst experiences at this restaurant.

We went there to celebrate my friend's birthday and we ordered their fisherman's choice tasting menu. It's their once a month special tasting menu that's only available once a month on the last Sunday. And I have to say this is one of the worst tasting menus ever. This is not what I consider an authentic Japanese tasting menu. The fisherman's menu was $400 for 6, if you have extra people, it'll be $75 per extra person.

Menu of the day. We didn't choose wine pairing as we prefer ordering our own drinks. 

Lobster and toro sashimi. It tasted good but I don't like my sashimi being salted. I prefer having control over the amount of soy sauce I use. I wasn't given any soy sauce at all. 

A piece of over fried black cod. It was over fried and some parts of the fish tasted burnt. 

Roasted duck breast tasted alright

marinated tako salad. This tasted fine but was nothing special.

This isn't something I expect to find at a Japanese restaurant especially given the price tag. We've been given a whole fish and we had to serve ourselves. The boston lettuce even came with the root just to show its freshness. The fish didn't taste special at all. There were scales stuck to the fish. And this is not the kind of fish where you can actually eat the scales. To me this is worse than having fish at home. At least for the fish I eat at home, my family ensures there is no scale on the fish. 

Lobster sandwich with mussels and there weren't even enough mussels per person. for the lobster sandwich, this tastes like a lobsters sandwich you get from McDonald's from the PEI. Again we have to serve ourselves and distribute the food among ourselves.  

Sushi that came in a huge platter. The way they put it does look nice but there wasn't enough sushi. We each had 4 pieces of sushi and for some pieces of sushi, the fish wasn't big enough to cover the rice. 

We were given two pieces of smoked fish sushi and two pieces or traditional sushi. For the traditional sushi, the fish was seasoned with salt. That is not how I prefer my sushi, I prefer adding soy sauce and wasabi to my sushi. The chef's skill wasn't that good as some pieces were falling apart. Given the chef's skill wasn't that good, the sushi should be served on your individual plates not in a platter. I did not order a sushi boat. 

Dessert was awful, we bought our own cake and the strawberry cake on the side was what they served. They made their cake in house but it tastes like regular pastries you get from those average Chinese bakeries. The cake was dry and tasteless. We didn't have to serve ourselves because we brought own cake and they had to serve us our cake. They wouldn't give us a knife for us to cut the cake. They knew it was an ice cream cake and by the time they finished cutting up the cake and started serving us, it was another 10 minutes and my ice cream cake started to melt. After the meal we still felt hungry. It wasn't so bad because of our own cake. 

Overall this is not a restaurant I would go back and I would not suggest my friends to try this place.  When we made the reservations they knew it was for a birthday gathering and they said they would do something special and in the end we did get something special which was a terrible meal that we had to serve ourselves. We arrived early while the birthday girl came a little bit late, they actually asked us to start our meals before the birthday girl arrives. I've never been asked to start my meal before the whole party arrives. Never at any other restaurants and starting the meal before all your friends arrive is just rude. We were charged 18% for gratuity when we were basically serving ourselves for the entire night. The waitress only came by to pour you two cups of sake and bring you the food from the kitchen. 

Given the meal wasn't cheap at all and with the food served, it's not worth it's price tag at all. For the same price, you're better off to try the omakase at Kaji Sushi which is the best omakase in Toronto and it's an authentic Japanese restaurant and run by Japanese. 

Le Cafe Michi omakase dinner

Le Cafe Michi is one of my favourite Japanese Restaurant in town since it's within reasonable driving distance for a weeknight dinner. I go there often but this was my first time trying out their omakase menu. I normally enjoy having control over my own food. most of the food in the omakase menu were good but I just prefer ordering my own food.  Every time I go to this restaurant it's always packed so it's necessary to make reservations if you're going on a weekend.

Appetizers. Something I hate about omakase is their appetizers. Most of them aren't that good. The only good appetizers I've tried at a omakase were from Kaji Sushi. Others all failed to impress me.

This was good. I love the walnuts in the salad. But a salad is a salad so it's nothing special.

Assorted sashimi plate. You have saba, ika, tobiko, salmon, hamachi, amaebi and tuna. As usual the quality of the sashimi was great. This is one of the few places where I will eat their tunas as most places don't offer fresh tuna sashimi. The best part is they give you good quality wasabi not the ones that come straight from a tube.

Japanese style steamed egg

Steamed egg with assorted mushroom and leek. This is offered most of the time if you have omakase at a Japanese restaurant in Toronto. 

simmered fish as one of the hot dishes

assorted sushi. They have great futomaki here. The uni are also good. I've had my best uni don at this place. They gave me 3 different batches of uni on my uni don. 

For dessert, they have lots of choices. They normally have around 6-7 kinds of dessert you can choose from. This time I chose their sugarless chocolate mousse cake. It's not too sweet so it was good but I do prefer their other cakes over the mousse cake. 

For the other dessert we chose the regular cream brûlée.  I didn't try it so I don't know how it tasted. 

Address: 1802 Pharmacy Avenue, Toronto

Restaurant Review: Naruto Sushi & Hibachi

When it comes to food I try to keep things positive and don't really want to complain about a restaurant unless it's a huge disappointment. I don't normally complain about AYCE restaurants because for the price and amount of food you get. But this one is wrong in every single way. I do go to AYCE Japanese restaurants so I do know what to expect from AYCE. This is one of the worst AYCE restaurants I've been to.

First of all the price is 20.95 for weekday AYCE, that is actually higher than average AYCE price for a week night. Most Japanese AYCE are priced ay 18.99 on a week night so charging more means you better provide me with better food.

When you give me an AYCE menu it means everything on the menu is AYCE and I can order them and do not tell me I need to pay extra when I want to order the item and making excuses about that's their normal menu and things I want to order is not included in the AYCE price. If you want to charge extra on the items make a separate menu. Or if you don't want people to order the items again make a note and tell people they can only order once.

The cooked food are either overcooked or it didn't taste good. For sashimi not all of them are fresh. I didn't feel well after I got home.

shrimp tempura. the only decent food cooked by them. It was at least freshly made and was served hot.

negi beef roll and enoki beef roll. too small and too much sauce to actually taste the food.

mussel- no taste at all. I hate adding mayo to my food so it made it taste worse. 

deep fried scallop, no taste at all. you can only taste the thousand island sauce.

just from the picture you can tell the saba and tako sashimi aren't fresh. they look watery and the color didn't look right.

salmon was alright. Well no matter how bad a Japanese restaurant is, you can't really screw up salmon sashimi. 

The squid sashimi in this picture are a lot bigger compared to the second plate we got. 

the chips in the middle is their so called fusion hawaii sashimi. it's mixing canned fruit and fish with mayo and serving it on a piece of Pringles. This is not called sashimi. 

Again what's with the carrot. 

beef tataki. Um.. I've never had beef tataki served on a pile of carrot. beef tataki are paired with turnip not carrots. The dipping sauce didn't taste right. 

special roll and spider roll. The rolls were so loosely rolled up. The spider rolls were literally falling apart. 

squid sashimi and salmon sashimi. They didn't want you to order the squid sashimi again so some pieces were chopped into super tiny pieces that you will have problem picking them with your chopsticks. 

pork cutlet, overcooked and it's too dry

assorted skewers. everything is overcooked. never had yakitori that tasted so bad. 

grilled squid. The teriyaki sauce is too sweet. 

steak teriyaki. steak overcooked and the sauce being too sweet

Fried ice cream also known as tempura ice cream. Not a lot of places have it so I was surprised they offered it BUT this is not authentic. Fried ice cream means deep fried ice cream and it doesn't mean you're wrapping the ice cream in a piece of cake and deep frying the cake. The Ice cream tasted bad and the cake taste horrible and it's not even cooked properly. 

Restaurant Review: Miyabi

This is the restaurant I normally go to when I crave for good Japanese food on a weeknight. This is one of the better Japanese restaurants that is close to home. There are closer ones but they are just not as good. With their winter promotion during the last few months, I was there once a week. With the buy 1 get 1 half off promotion, I find it worth going. Even without the promotion, I still go there once or twice a month.

They always have fresh sashimi and this is what I order a lot. Sashimi moriwasa. There are normally 6-7 kinds of sashimi on the platter. Unlike most places stuffing you up with salmon and butterfish. The tuna they serve is fresh and doesn't have the fishy taste where you find in a lot of restaurants. I avoid tuna sashimi cause most places offer fishy tuna aka it's not fresh. 

The sushi deluxe is also an item I order a lot. They have a wide variety of sushi including my favourite uni and ikura. They have a cheaper sushi platter that doesn't include the uni and ikura. So if you don't like uni and ikura you can definitely pick the cheaper set. 

Their handrolls are also amazing. The seaweed is very crispy and the size is just right. I normally get the spicy salmon and neigihama handroll. The seaweed might not be too crispy during the weekend but on a weekday, the seaweed is perfect. 

If you don't like raw food, they also have great cooked food. They have one of the best katsu don in the uptown area. everything in the rice bowl is cooked right. The pork cutlet won't be too dry or overcooked. 

Tempura Udon is also good. The batter on the tempura isn't very thick! But I would still recommend solo sushi ya for their tempura for the uptown area.

Do you love Japanese food? What is your favourite Japanese restaurant?

Restaurant Review: Solo Sushi Ya

I love Japanese food and it's something I can have every night and never get tired of. There are lots of Japanese restaurants in where I live but most of them are run by Korean and Chinese. I tend to avoid those restaurants as the quality of the food is just not so great. I still go to Chinese run Japanese restaurants for Teppanyaki in Toronto. But when it comes to Sushi, I try to stick to Japanese run restaurants. The quality of the food is just better.

About this restaurant, the first time I've heard about it was around 2 years ago when I was searching for a decent Japanese Restaurant that is relatively closer to home and there I found Solo Sushi Ya. They do have another location in downtown but I heard it's not as good and downtown is much farther for me than Newmarket. Even if I drive local, it only takes me 20 to get there. The only thing I want to complain about is it doesn't open on weekends during lunch time and there are food on the menu that are only offered during lunch time. So unless I actually take time off work to go there for lunch on a weekday otherwise I can never have them.

I know a lot of people go there for their omakase, but I am not a fan of their omakase. I've tried it once and my friend also tried it. We both think that the omakase is not that great. There are other places for omakase. They are good food but I prefer to have something I have control over. They serve good hot Japanese food it's just that the food in the omakase isn't something I truly like.

They offer very fresh sashimi, it's one of my favourite places in town for sashimi. I like to get their open sashimi. You don't know what you get, basically the chef decides for you. He makes his choices based on what he knows you like and the best catch of the day. For their open sashimi, he charges based on the market value so you won't know the price on the menu.

For me, the open sashimi always consists of smoked mackerel, tuna, hamachi, salmon, amaebi (sweet shrimp). The remaining sashimi always depends on the catch of the day. This time we got aji instead of the normal scallop sashimi. The aji was served with ginger and spring onions. I've always wanted to try aji in Toronto but most restaurants don't have it. I just realized you can only get fresh aji on Fridays or Saturdays as the fish dealer/importer leaves Toronto on Tuesdays and comes back on Thursday nights with their fresh catch so it's only available on Fridays and Saturdays.   

Salad with homemade salad dressing. I actually like their salad dressing but I prefer the salad dressing at Shiso Tree Cafe at J Town.

Uni sushi with homemade soy sauce. I love uni sushi. 

Aji, Ika and Hamachi. All are great with aji being the best. 

Aji sushi. I haven't tried aji sushi at other Toronto Japanese restaurants before so I can't compare. 

abalone, scallop and amaebi(sweet shrimp) sushi. 

They ran out of octopus sushi so they gave me abalone sushi instead. This place has really good amaebi sushi. Just look at the size of the shrimp. I love the shrimp here. 

Just look at the shrimp. It's so big and juicy! Apart from Solo Sushi, the only other restaurant that served huge Amaebi is Kaji Sushi. Other places only serve you the tiny amaebi that is the size of my pinky finger. 

This is something new to me. I love handrolls but I've never tried the handrolls at Solo Sushi. They are a lot bigger than the handrolls at Miyabi but these taste so good. They are spicy salmon, negi hama ( chopped up hamachi with spring onion) and spicy tuna handrolls. The negi hama has to be the best among the three. One of the must try from this restaurant. 

Free dessert!! I'm glad their free dessert is not green tea ice cream. I tend to skip dessert if all they give me is a green tea ice cream. Their daily dessert is a coffee pudding made by Jyo's wife. I think this pudding is available daily because I see it every time I go. My boyfriend doesn't like dessert also enjoyed this pudding. 

I didn't order any sets but I was still given the salad and miso soup so I'm not sure if this place gives out salad and miso soup to all its customers as I know some places don't do that unless it's specified in your meal. The chef also gave me and my boyfriend free sake as this was our first time there after the new year. 

This is a restaurant I enjoy going to but I don't go there very often. Maybe once every two or three months but most of my experiences there are enjoyable. It's a small restaurant so expect to wait and do make reservations as it gets pretty crowded on Fridays during the warmer months.