Niko Niko Roll & Sushi

Niko Niko
20 King St. East
Kitchener, Ontario

During our recent trips to Ye's we had noticed that the quality of the food had taken a turn for the worse, not to mention an implicit hike in prices (canned pop was no longer included in the all you can eat price). This, combined with the fact we had gorged ourselves far too many times in an effort to get our money's worth, led us to try Niko Niko Roll & Sushi -- a place that has been favourably mentioned by a couple of our friends. At first it seemed wrong to go somewhere that did not have limitless sushi when it was available just down the street, but it turned out sometimes less is more.

The emphasis of the menu is of course their namesake rolls. There are about 25 varieties to choose from, ranging from the traditional (Rainbow Roll - multicoloured raw fish) to the interesting (Grand Canyon) to the bizarrely named (Love Love). The presentation is top notch with nicely plated items decorated with care, compared to the slap-it-together-as-quickly-as-possible items from Ye's.

Most rolls are reasonably priced from $8-$12 each and 1-2 will fill up the average person. Also available are combos, which come with salad, and you can add a half order of udon noodles for $2. A special roll of the day (one selected from the menu) is also available at a discounted price with the combo and is a pretty good deal at $12.90 including salad and 6 pieces of sushi.

The salad is fairly typical - iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots and a couple slices of tomato with a nice Japanese dressing.

We tried the udon noodles for $2 extra with a combo. Again, a pretty safe noodle dish with all the standard ingredients, plus a shaker of shichimi togarashi (be careful, very spicy!)

In our two visits, we sampled the following rolls:

Hawaiian Roll (pictured with 6 piece sushi combo) - It wasn't one of the more interesting rolls, but it was the special of the day so we went with it. It was just avocado and tuna wrapped around a california roll.

Tornado Roll - squid tempura, spicy crab, avocado. Basically a tempura roll with avocado topped with chopped up spicy crab meat. A little on the creamy side with the sauce on top but tasty.

Spider Roll (not pictured) - soft shelled crab, avocado, cucumber and masago. A much heartier portion of soft-shelled crab than at Ye's. Here, there were actual crab legs and claws sticking of out the roll the way it should be. The crab was a little undercooked, or perhaps the oil temperature was slightly too low, as it wasn't as crispy as I would have liked. Otherwise, very enjoyable.

Grand Canyon Roll (not pictured) - eel, salmon, bread crumbs. This one was for the adventurous. Eel and salmon rolled together, topped with bread crumbs and cheese and baked. Cheese seems to be a fairly common ingredient at Niko Niko, appearing in quite a few of their rolls but it's not something I usually expect on sushi. Here it was overwhelming the rest of the ingredients in this roll, plus the warm temperature threw off the taste a little. As a bonus though, there were some crunchy rice bits stuck to the tinfoil like you'd find at bottom of a pot of fried rice.

Love Love (not pictured) - spicy tuna, salmon, avocado, cucumber. The spicy tuna was chopped on top, and not much to say about the taste except that it was a combination of the ingredients. The presentation was nice and probably accounts for the second "love".

The restaurant was more than half empty on the two week nights we visited, but I expect weekends to be more crowded. Decor wise the restaurant is well lit on the two week nightsand interestingly is decorated with murals of Venice, presumably from the location's last iteration as Venizia. The main mural was left largely intact, except for the addition of a Niko Niko sign done in a fine black Sharpie on one of the merchants along the canals of venice. See if you can spot it on your next visit!

Overall, we were pretty pleased with the quality of the food and will visit it quite often, especially when we're not in the mood to eat until we explode.

Ye's Sushi Japanese Restaurant

Ye's Sushi
103 King St. West
Kitchener, Ontario N2G 1A9

A friend told us that there was a new all-you-can-eat sushi place in downtown Kitchener, so we decided to check it out. We didn't go with high expectations, after all, what quality should you expect from an all-you-can-eat place? It turned out to be a decent restaurant; a great place to go with a bunch of friends (especially if they are thrilled by the "all you can eat" idea).

Dinner is $19.99 per person. Other than the limitation on expensive sashimi (2 pieces of tuna and scallops per person), you can order literally anything commonly seen in a Japanese restaurant. Selection ranges from appetizers, sushi to desserts. Pops are also included in the $19.99 flat fee, additional cost will apply if you order other drinks such as orange juice. They also offer lunch for $12.99 with a slightly smaller selection. By the way, make sure you only order what you can finish. You'll get charged (punished?) if anything is left, e.g. $1 for each piece of sushi left on the plate. The ordering process is quite straight-forward - you write down the item number and quantity (e.g. "65 x 1" for 1 serving of item #65), the waitress will gather the lists and deliver items once they are made.

We started with edamame (Japanese beans), sea scallop tempura, age-dashi-dofu (deep-fried tofu), house salad, smoked salmon rice pizza (deep-fried rice cake topped with smoked salmon and spicy mayonnaise). As for sashimi, we ordered tuna and scallops. Some items are ok, some are pretty good even compared with regular Japanese restaurants. The quality of sashimi is ok but it is NOT reasonable to demand top-notch grade of sashimi from an all-you-can-eat place. Regardless, the sashimi was fresh. If the sashimi we had represents the Ye's restaurant's "norm" then they have already surpassed many Japanese restaurants in town.

Then the crazy sushi sampling began. I couldn't recall all the items we had but I'll try my best:

• Spicy salmon crispy maki, spicy salmon sushi: we first ordered spicy salmon sushi. the salmon was fresh and the spicy mayonnaise did have a kick in it. With the good impression, we ordered spicy salmon crispy maki afterwards. The crispy bits are interesting, I can't quite figure out what they are, maybe from chopped deep-fried chinese dough fritters?
  
• Mango and cucumber hand roll/maki: It is uncommon to have mango in sushi. I think it tasted alright, thought one friend complained that the mango wasn't ripe enough.
  
• Red snapper sushi: probably the most disappointing item throughout the whole meal
  
• White tuna sushi: second most disappointing item
  
• BBQ eel sushi: It was on the dry, plain side; probably prepared from a frozen BBQ eel package.
  
• Salmon roe sushi (Ikura): Whenever I have sushi, I like to order salmon roe (if available). It tasted about right. And I am glad that they didn't put a limit on this item.
  
• Flying fish roe sushi: a friend ordered it. No complaint afterward so probably ok.
  
• Black dragon roll: it consists of avocado, BBQ eel, shrimp tempura, etc. The shrimp tempura was a bit soggy but it was still quite tasty.
  
• Maple roll: flying fish eggs, squid in a roll. Not as impressive as the Black dragon roll.
  
• Spider roll: avocado, soft-shell crab, the usual ingredients for a spider roll. About as tasty as the Black dragon roll.
  

To wrap up the dinner, we had mango, green tea and red bean ice cream. The green tea ice cream was no match with what we had in Uji (the city in Japan, famous of its green tea) but just as good as the ones we'll get charged $2-3 per serving in a North American Japanese restaurant. Not a bad way to end a meal especially since it's already included in the flat fee.

Overall, I'll say the food is better than some Japanese restaurants in town, maybe equivalent, say, the California Roll & Crazy Sushi on Bloor St. in Toronto. If you attempt to "maximize" your money worth of value by ordering lots of sushi (the type w/ a piece of fish on top of rice), you might have to swallow lots of "not-so-good" sushi. However, if you know what you might be getting (the limitation of their budget on materials) and order "appropriate" items, it can be quite enjoyable. After all, we did enjoy the spider roll and dragon roll a lot. We will definitely revisit this restaurant, with friends.

Yamato Japanese Restaurant

Yamato Japanese Restaurant
18 Bellair St.
Toronto, Ontario M5R 2C7

We didn't originally plan to go to this restaurant. The food is nice, but we stayed at Sheraton on Queen St. (The restaurant is in Yorkville). What can I say? We just don't visit Toronto frequently enough that some of my favorite eateries gone in between our visits.

Yamato is divided into two sections, one is for sushi, the other is for teppanyaki. Teppanyaki, as its name suggests (in Japanese), is cooking/grilling on a big flat metal surface. What makes having teppanyaki a fun experience is you get to see the chef's performance while cooking.

I heard that it takes years of training (probably not as long as being trained as a sushi chef) to master teppanyaki techniques. I am not sure if they have the same strict standard in North America but it is quite fun seeing the chef preparing food for us.

There are several stations in the teppanyaki section. The chef works in the center and customers sit around him. There is metal surface (i.e. the grill), between the seat and the chef, on every side of the station, so the chef can prepare food right in front of the customers no matter where they sit. There were three customers (me, J and one guy) at this station. The chef showed up with a little cart which carried all the food ingredients. He asked us how well we wanted our tenderloin and rib eye done (medium rare) then he started his "ceremony".

Did I mention that the whole prep process was quite a show? The onions, sliced into rings, were piled like a dome. With some oil drizzled on top and a match...the flame went at least 2 feet high. Shrimp grouped on the other side of the grill top, a bit of oil, seasoning and a match...another flame! Although he didn't put every ingredient on fire, the whole process was as smooth as water flow. Prior to serving, he drummed the sale and pepper shakers (all the tossing and sounds). Then he served all orders at the same time.

There is a HUGE difference between flambeed and burned food. Clearly the shrimp I had was the former one; it was cooked just right, not soggy nor rubbery. The onions were nicely caramelized. The tenderloin was extremely juice and tender (J also liked his rib eye very much). The veggies were typical teriyaki style. Oh, he added herbal butter in bean sprout. The first time I went to that restaurant, I was slightly concerned about that big bowlful of "wasabi" on the chef's cart. It turned out to be herbal butter, prepared by chopping herbs then mixing all ingredients in a blender. We were offered two sauces for dipping, mustard and ginger. The mustard sauce got the mustard kick and some tangy taste, very interesting flavor.

Overall it was a great dining experience. However, J got stomachache afterwards. My stomach didn't like it much either last time we visited. I really hope it is just some freaking coincidence since the food is good.

Charlie's Lunchbox

Charlie's Lunchbox
(in University Plaza, betweem Gino's pizza and Grand China. Waterloo)

Today I didn't bring my lunch (more precisely speaking, I didn't pack my lunch last night) so I decided to grab something from this newly-opened restaurant. My coworkers and I were kind of pressed of time so we decided to order something to go.

We arrived around 12: 15PM. The menus were written on two blackboards. One had items such as "Lunch Box A" "Lunch Box B", the other one had more specific description (e.g. "BBQ chicken leg"). I couldn't help but to ask, "What's in Lunch Box A?". I was told that they would start to offer lunch combos once the school term begins. O~kay. So what options do we have? The young lady was very nice, she removed the lid of every tray and showed us the items (the sincerity is very much appreciated). Today they had BBQ chicken for $4.99, grilled salmon for $5.99 and shrimp tempura for $5.99. I ordered shrimp tempura while my coworkers ordered BBQ chicken.

There was no shrimp tempura in the steam table so it was MADE TO ORDER :). We were prompted to choose "steamed vegetables" or "salad". I chose the steamed vegetables. The young lady first had a big spoonful of veggi in my container, but was soon instructed to take out half. I was a bit shocked at that time. "I knew it! I knew it! $6 for a shrimp tempura combo. maybe I'll only get a piece of greasy batter w/ bite-size rice and 2 baby carrots"...that was the first idea coming into my mind. However, she filled up that corner w/ potato wedges. Then the "assembling line" started to operate. One slice of Japanese spongy egg (the type normally appears on top of nigiri sushi), 2 deep-fried dumplings, 3 small sauteed fish balls and rice were put in my lunch box and only left one corner for the battered shrimp. My coworkers were asked if they would like to have pickled ginger or pickle. They said, "neh, it's ok". But they still got a generous does of ginger. While at the cashier, we were offered to take one free drink since it is still their promotion period.

We went back to the office and finished our lunch in the kitchen. Our lunch boxes were the CHAMPION! Everyone else was asking, "Where did you get that?" after learning that it only costs $5 or $6 (plus tax), mmm...it is quite obvious where we will all go for lunch next time. :) The food was fresh and the staff was extremely friendly. I've been thru the ups and downs of Mr. Sushi (Did I mention that "Charlie's Lunchbox is run by the Charlie who started Mr. Sushi?). It was a great experience today and I hope that the quality of food and service will last.

Hiro Sushi

Hiro Sushi
171 King St. East
Toronto, Ontario, M5A 1J4


This is going to be a long one. Please bear with me.

My hubby and I went to Hiro Sushi for dinner on August 13, 2005. We have heard good things about this restaurant (from friends and Toronto Life) and decided to check it out.

Before we went, we thought it would be a high-style restaurant. To my surprise, the atmosphere is actually quite "homy". Other than the chef's prep counter, what really caught my eyes is an old photo of two snuggling bunnies (the picture is so HUGE that the bunnies in the picture are at least ten times larger than their actual sizes). And the chef is probably a big fan of Marilyn Monroe; there are several posters of hers on the way to the washrooms downstairs. Some customers were in casual attire; they sat at the sushi bar and chatted with the sushi chef.

We were warned about the potential communication difficulty (with the staff) and the food portion. There is absolute no problem for us in terms of their food portion; we've seen worse. The REAL CHALLENGE is to order our food. Don't get me wrong, their staff is nice, definitely no "attitude". I just feel deeply regretted that all the money I spent on my Japanese classes was down in the drain; I wish I could order in Japanese.

We were guided to the Sushi bar. After we sat down, the waitress gave us the drink menu. There are about 6 sake items on the menu, including the usual Gekkeikan or Hakutsuru brands. I ordered a bottle of "Okunomatsu Ginjo" (200 mL bottle, $14) since LCBO doesn't seem to carry it.

Since we made up our mind to try the Chef's special (Omakase), we didn't spend much time reading the menu. After we placed our order, (here comes the fun part) a cook walked out from the kitchen asking us "what kind of omakase" we had in mind. Huh? Isn't that Chef's choice? After his explanation, we realized that we could choose to have the sushi-only omakase or the full combo, which includes appetizers and soup prepared in the kitchen. They are normally served before the sushi course. J ordered the full combo and I chose the sushi-only omakase.

Then he brought up the next question but we didn't quite catch it. something about "at the same time". I thought he was asking us if our meals should be served at the same time since the full combo would start with the appetizers and the soup. So I replied, "Yes, please." 'cause I didn't want to sit there and watch J eat. After he left, J asked me, "What was his question?" "Eh...see if we want to start at the same time?" My jaw almost dropped when the assistant placed the plate full of sushi in front of me within the first 15 minutes after we entered the restaurant.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH~~ Is that all I'll have for the night? I was hoping that, by ordering omakase, I would have chance to get one or two pieces at once from the chef and let him gauge our eating. So we could have super-fresh sushi in every bite. But in reality I was facing a tough choice: should I eat fast and enjoy the freshness but see that $40 gone within one blink? or should I savor it but the freshness of the remaining pieces will decrease with time? The situation I was in pretty much explains the fact that...I completely misunderstood his question.

Despite this incident, the food is actually amazingly good. The sake came with a beautiful sake decanter. I remember I saw it in "Made to Order" (TV program) once. Not sure if I can get it from J-town but I should be able to order it online. The sake was well-chilled and had such fruity aroma, hard to believe that sake is actually made of rice.

The first appetizer was served on top of a big chunk of ice lined with one shiso leaf. The octopus along with other ingredients were thinly sliced and piled on that "platform". There is nothing fancy about their plating. But serving food on a big chunk of ice (about 2.5" in diameter, 1.5" tall) in the middle of the summer makes me feel that they sincerely want you to feel cool and comfortable and enjoy their food.

The second appetizer was made of some fish liver (monkfish?). I saw similar dish on Iron Chef before. It is considered a delicacy in Japanese cuisine. Let's call it "the Japanese' fois gras". There is nothing fancy about the dish but the flavoring was just so right.

The soup course had one salmon fish ball floating in the clear broth (or water, we couldn't taste anything from it). The texture of the fish ball was nice. There was such gentle yet complex taste in the fish ball; it slowly released in your mouth. You could easily miss it if you just scoop the ball in your mouth and swallow it.

There is another reason that I slightly panic when I saw all the pieces were on one plate - Where should I start? I used to be a fan of "Shota no Sushi" (Japanese manga/anime series) and I learned a lot from it. The sequence of eating your sushi is a BIG DEAL. If you happen to have something with richer flavor before a light piece, you won't appreciate the latter as much as consuming them in a proper order. Some chefs might even take it personal because they spend so much effort "plotting the drama" (from getting the freshest ingredients to designing an impeccable sequence to present their work) and you DARE to ruin it. If my memory serves me right, I should start from the upper left corner. But why was salmon the first piece? isn't it supposed to be considered very rich? I soon shook those ideas out of my head. They are probably very used to "foreigners" who don't know how to eat sushi. I might as well chill and be myself.

Most of the pieces were nigiri (hand-held sushi) except 6 pieces of California roll maki made by the assistant. Each piece was so picturesque, as if straight from Sushi Chef School text books. Ok, I made it up. But judging by naked eyes, fish slice is about 1/4" thick, 7/8"x 3" (roughly T0.5cm x W2.2cm x L7.6cm) and the rice underneath is about 3/4" tall 5/8"x1.5" (roughly H2cm x W1.6cm x L4cm).

Chef Yoshida's approach is very traditional, but he does things PROPERLY. There was no stand-alone wasabi paste on the sushi plate and soy-sauce was the only condiment available on the table. I am sure you can ask for more wasabi but this shows how confident the chef is about the freshness of the ingredients. When I first put the sushi in my mouth, I could taste slight saltiness from the fish. Then I could clearly feel that the fish being torn and surrounded by the rice, the aroma became more intense then all of sudden, the fish just "melted away". There is only one word to describe it: heavenly! And the chef was able to cast the same spell again and again until I cleaned my plate.

I strongly believe that many people who don't like raw fish sushi is because they haven't tried a GOOD one yet. Good sushi should not taste "fishy", not to mention other unpleasant characteristics such as slimy and soggy. Based on this dining experience, Hiro Sushi is quite conservative. No fusion or new ingredient combinations. But it keeps the fundamentals of a good sushi restaurant: great ingredients, solid techniques and the respect of a chef's professionalism. If there is a chance, I'll definitely go back.