sushi Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Curiously Carmen

Sushi California

June 4, 2014

I have heard many great things about this restaurant, but never went to try it because I’m not in that area. One night, I was craving sushi and decided to finally come here after hearing Cheese rave about this place. House special rolls for around $5? Count me in!

We went a bit later and since it was a Friday evening, we knew for sure it would be busy.
Sushi California is located inside a small strip mall right across from Lougheed Mall. There is a small parking lot, but some spots are reserved for other merchants in the strip mall. I would imagine that the small parking lot gets pretty crazy during peak hours.

Anyways, we found parking with no problem since we got there around 8:30pm. To our surprise, there was still a lineup inside the restaurant! I thought that the restaurant was more spacious than I expected.

It was a typical Japanese restaurant, nothing really special about the decoration or interior design. But the food, now that’s a different story…! The two of us ended up over-ordering and had to pack half our food to go. We weren’t sure how big their portions were because it was our first time!
This was their box sushi, which came with shrimp, smoked salmon, scallop, and more things that I can’t remember anymore ($4.95). The sushi rice was pressed very nicely, giving the rice a great texture. It tasted very refreshing due to the lemon.

For $4.95, it was an amazing deal! Also, I ordered a single tobiko and salmon nigiri as well, which tasted fresh. Since we decided to not order a sashimi plate, I wanted to sample their sashimi and thought that it tasted pretty sweet and fresh.
Deep fried california roll, or as they call it, the “crunch california roll”. It was lightly fried, and crispy. Overall, I thought it was okay due to the sauce, but the boyfriend preferred Sushi Mura’s because it was crunchier and there was also more sauce. But again, for $3.95, it was a good deal.
Up next were our smoked salmon garlic roll ($4.50), chopped scallop roll ($3.95), and double spicy roll ($3.95). My favourite was the smoked salmon garlic roll because I am a huge fan of shrimp and smoked salmon!

I actually thought this roll tasted better the next day, because the rice absorbed the garlic overnight giving it more flavour. Some of the garlic flakes were also rock hard. The chopped scallop roll was pretty average. The double spicy roll came with spicy sashimi on top and in the inside. It wasn’t too spicy for me and I enjoyed the spicy tuna sashimi, as well as the crunchy flakes on top.
Last but not least, our chicken karage ($3.95!!! WHAT SO CHEAP?!)! This was absolutely delicious. You think for $3.95, they would cheap out on small chicken wings but nope, these were the juicest and biggest chicken wings I’ve seen! They were super hot, the skin was crispy, and was perfectly seasoned. If I knew how good it tasted and how big the portion was for $3.95, I would have ordered this instead of one of the rolls!

Overall, we really enjoyed our visit to Sushi California. There were many servers working, and they were all attentive and knowledgeable. The most amazing thing about this place is their PRICE though. For $4, you can get their house specialty rolls and the size is not compromised. We paid under $30 for our dinner and we were in disbelief at how cheap everything was. I love Sushi California because their food is delicious, and it is easy on our student budgets.

-Carmen

Yo Sushi, Burnaby

May 25, 2014

The boyfriend and I were feeling like sushi a few weeks ago, and wanted to try a new place as opposed to our regular sushi joints. We decided on going here based on a recommendation from my friend, who said that they have really great quality there.

I remember a year or two ago, when this place first opened, I was told by a different group of friends who did not like their experience here. They said that it was overpriced, and wasn’t that good for what you pay for. But I decided to try it, since that was over a year ago, things probably would have improved, right?
The first thing I noticed after walking in was how spacious the place was. We were the second party there, so we were greeted and seated pretty fast. Service was pretty friendly throughout the night.
To start off, we received complimentary chips.
We ordered a plate of tuna and salmon sashimi , $11.95. The sashimi was pretty disappointing and we would not order it again. The salmon did not taste fresh or sweet, and was very thin. It was also folded, which I’m not too sure why… maybe to make it look like bigger pieces? As for the tuna, it was still frozen and not thawed properly. It also did not taste super sweet or fresh.
Moving onto the rolls, we ordered the chopped scallop roll and negitoro roll. Both rolls were pretty average, nothing too special or outstanding about them. We appreciated that there was a bunch of chopped scallop on top of the roll, making it a better deal.
For the specialty roll, we ordered the red dragon roll which came with spicy tuna sashimi, crunchy flakes, and spicy mayo. This was probably the only thing that we thoroughly enjoyed, but for $9.95, it is a bit overpriced. Other sushi joints by Yo Sushi (Sushi Nanaimo, Sushi Garden, Sushi Town) have their red dragon rolls for around $5-6.

After our quick meal, we received hi-chew candy! I love hi-chew candy so this made me feel a lot better about the visit. They also gave us a free coupon for gyoza salad. We paid $32.35 for our meal, not including tip.

I don’t think we will be back here again, because there are other sushi places in this area that have better quality dishes for cheaper prices and there was nothing special about this place.

-Carmen

Tomokazu (Late night AYCE)

April 18, 2014

My friends and I wanted late night AYCE one night, and decided to come here. I came here a few years back and it was decent as far as AYCE goes, so we decided to come back. Overall, our visit was pleasant. We found out from trial and error which AYCE foods to order, and which to stray away from. If you want to save you and your tastebuds the hassle, keep reading on!

The restaurant is not brightly lit at all, as you can see from this picture. We actually parked at the wrong restaurant initially, because there was a Korean/Japanese restaurant on the second level two blocks down Broadway. I thought that they had just changed the exterior and added Korean food to their offering, but nope.
We came for the late night AYCE. For those who don’t know, some AYCE restaurants offer a discounted rate if you go after a certain time. For Tomokazu, it was 9:30. Their late night AYCE menu isn’t as extensive as their regular menu, but it’s cheaper!
Here are the first four dishes that came, starting with the salmon and tuna sashimi. As expected, the sashimi pieces were pretty small and did not taste super fresh, but still passable. The tuna pieces in particular were really tiny, like tiny mini erasers.

There is also a limit of 6 pieces of EACH sashimi that you could order per round (max 12 per round). I forgot about the miso soup and it turned cold, when I drank it it tasted pretty watery. You could tell that the spinach gomae had been in the fridge the whole day, but it was still pretty tasty due to the rich peanut butter sauce. The spinach itself did not taste bad either, it was pretty juicy. I ended up ordering 2 more orders of this because I liked how juicy and refreshing the chilled spinach was.

I laughed when the salmon teriyaki came because it was so thin, but it was cooked well and decent.
Next came our rolls, which were pretty good! The salmon maki tasted like a regular roll you would order at a restaurant. The chopped scallop cone had a generous portion of scallop, we were all pretty impressed.

We ordered one seafood cone because we were curious, and it was pretty good as well! It came with cooked salmon and mayo. The beside it was the BC Roll , I’m not a fan of salmon skin but my friends liked it. Next was the Tomokazu special roll which we ordered because my friend is very adventurous and has a “why not” attitude when it comes to ordering. We were glad that we ordered it since it was very tasty!

We agreed that this plate alone was worth the money, because when you go to restaurants, cones are around $4 each!
All of these plates were so good! The agedashi tofu was very crispy, I’m pretty sure it was made fresh which is rare for AYCE! I didn’t try the seafood and oyster motoyakis, but my friends both loved it. It was very cheesy, and the seafood one came with a lot of salmon. I loved the chicken karage. It was crispy, well seasoned, and cooked well. We ordered a lot of them afterwards too. The korean BBQ pork was really good as well. It was seasoned and grilled perfectly and cut into small strips.
But wait, there’s more! The hokkigai tasted pretty chewy and rubbery to me, so I probably wouldn’t order this again. The beef teriyaki was very sweet, but towards the end, the remaining beef was very mushy and looked like stew. The BBQ chicken wing was good according to my friend, I was too busy eating the rest of the chicken karage to try this. Finally, the gyoza which my friend thought tasted pretty good (At this point, I was stuffed and wanted to save room for jello).
After drinking more tea and resting, we were ready to stuff ourselves with jello! My friend noted that some places keep their jello with the seafood, so it ends up tasting like fishy jello. He was happy when he found out this was not the case here. However, I noticed that some restaurants keep their jello out for so long that the edges of the jello become kinda hard and dry, but this was not the case either. It was pretty decent jello!

Overall, we had a great experience at AYCE. I personally came with low expectations because it’s AYCE, you can’t expect supreme quality when you’re getting as much food as you possibly can.

Service was average, the workers didn’t really come to top our tea or anything, but it was fine. We ended up staying for more than 1.5 hours (the maximum time limit), but they let us sit and digest our food until they closed.

-Carmen

Hime Sushi

March 15, 2014

The boyfriend and I came here one evening during a break between my classes. We were looking for some fast, delicious, fresh tasting sushi and after wanting to try this place for a few months, we decided to actually go.

I’m glad we went because Hime Sushi serves up some really fresh and delicious sashimi, as well as other dishes. I think their sashimi was the star of the show, but their specialty rolls were delicious too.

Hime Sushi is really easy to miss when you’re driving by. The outside of the restaurant doesn’t really stand out, we were both surprised when we found out it was by Broadway and Main because we drive by this area multiple times a week, yet we’ve never noticed it until we street-viewed (is that even a verb?) it.

Trying to take a picture of the outside was also quite difficult to catch everything, but I tried my best.

It wasn’t too busy when we first arrived. The servers were polite, attentive, and friendly. Hime Sushi also starts you off with a small plate of chilled edamame beans. I looove edamame beans so we were off to a great start.
The first dish that came was our tuna and salmon sashimi. I’ve read on Urbanspoon that they have really fresh and juicy sashimi, so it was time to test that out.

And boy, was their sashimi ever delicious! It was really fresh, juicy, and sweet – all great components to delicious sashimi. Yum! I noticed their slices of sashimi were a bit smaller than usual, but the freshness of the sashimi made up for it.
Of course, you can’t go to a new restaurant without trying their specialty rolls. This was there ocean red roll which consists of spicy tuna and green onion in the inside, with wild sockeye salmon on top. It came drizzled with hot sauce.

Again, we really enjoyed this due to the quality and freshness of the sashimi. I found myself finishing off every little detail of this roll because it was so good!
Some standard rolls, starting with the salmon and avocado. This was really good due to the freshness of the salmon and avocado. Not only is their sashimi fresh, but avocado as well! The second one was the negitoro (tuna and onion) roll. We enjoyed this one too.
We ended up ordering a second time since I wasn’t completely full yet. I love tobiko. This was their tobiko roll, which I loved. Their sushi rice was really flavourful and sweet, with the right texture and the tobiko was also really crunchy.

All in all, we thoroughly loved our visit to Hime Sushi even though their portions were smaller than we were used to. Hime Sushi uses really fresh ingredients, and you can totally taste it in their dishes. I am in love with their sashimi and sushi rice. Their service was also really friendly and prompt too. We allocated one hour to eat since I had to go back to class, but we ended up finishing our meal in under 40 minutes.

-Carmen

Dream Sushi

March 6, 2014

Hi everyone,

The boyfriend, his little brother, and I were in the neighborhood last week and were craving some sushi, so we decided to check out Dream Sushi after reading some positive reviews on Urbanspoon.

I’ve been here once a few years ago, but I don’t remember anything from my visit. However, we had a pleasant and satisfying visit at Dream Sushi and would probably come back here again if we were in the area!
So, with all the crappy and rainy weather we had recently, I didn’t get a chance to take a decent picture. Here is one I found of Google with credit to Sherman’s Food Adventures (http://www.shermansfoodadventures.com/).

It is pretty small inside, even though it’s cozy. Their walls are filled with different comments from customers on brightly coloured paper, which I thought looked pretty cool since I’ve never seen a restaurant completely fill up their walls like that.

This place is also Chinese-owned, I’m assuming with all the Cantonese I heard from all the staff.
The first thing we ordered was the salmon sashimi ($9.50). It tasted really fresh and juicy. As you can tell from the picture, the slices were pretty thick and decent too.

It came under a bed of shredded daikon. I would definitely order this again, with how fresh it tasted!
This was the paparazzi roll ($8.95), which was comprised of spicy tuna, cucumber, avocado, fried yam crisps (? I think, not too sure but it was crispy) with seared tuna tataki, spicy mayo, onions, and sesame on top. This was AMAZING.

I loved how all the ingredients tasted so perfectly with each other. This roll was made with a lot of care, quality, and detail as you can tell with the garnishing on top. It also tasted really fresh, and there was a slight crunch inside. The sashimi in this dish was also very fresh tasting as well. I would highly recommend trying this dish! YUM!
Last but not least, we ordered some regular rolls. I’ll start with the california roll ($3.50). This tasted like a regular california roll, but the avocado was really fresh.

Most restaurants either add cucumber OR avocado, but they included both in their roll. I also liked how there was sesame on top, it was a great addition to detail and made a somewhat-boring roll look more interesting. Look at those sesame seeds!
The other roll we ordered was the negitoro roll ($2.75). Nothing special about this roll, we all enjoyed it and didn’t really have any complaints. We also ordered a chopped scallop roll ($3.75). Again, nothing too special about this roll either. The last roll was the smoked salmon roll ($3.75). We were a bit disappointed with this roll because we thought it would taste better than it actually did, but maybe we had high expectations due to the other dishes.

In conclusion, we enjoyed our visit to Dream Sushi. All of their sashimi is extremely fresh, and they prepare all their rolls with detail and quality. Service was attentive as well. They weren’t overly friendly or anything, but they made our visit pleasant and were quick to come to our table, and refilled our drinks without asking.