We almost went to Point Sushi just to experience the bullet train delivery method (we will!) but decided we should go somewhere with (potentially) better tasting sushi. Shijo Sushi in Kensington used to be another sushi restaurant. My friends had been to the previous restaurant so we thought we’d give it a shot since it’s mid-way between us both.
My friends showed up for the reservation 15 minutes early, so when I arrived just 5 minutes early they had menus and water; a good start. But, after I sat down we had no service for probably 20 minutes… even after we put down our menus and were clearly ready to order with our piece of paper on top, we were not attended to. We actually had to stick our arms out and grab the waitress as she walked by so we could place our order. She didn’t ask if we wanted tea or anything else – we had to tell her we wanted tea as she started walking away. It was not a good first impression at all. The restaurant became full pretty quickly and there were a lot of takeout orders being picked up, so perhaps she was run off her feet. Later in the evening we were better catered to – they filled up our tea cups, water, and refilled our tea pot regularly with hot water.
It took quite a while for our first dish to come out, but at least there was quite a bit of food on it (see above photo). Honestly, the three of us were not that impressed with much of the food this evening. The salmon sashimi was good – not cut too thick and not too large of pieces. The dinosaur roll was the best – it had the most flavour out of all of the rolls (yay jalapeño!) – it’s the only roll that I would get again. The salmon mango roll didn’t have much punch even though it was covered in a sweet sauce. The special Hokkaido scallop oshi, served in rectangular pieces, was hard to eat (but it cut in half easily enough) and had little flavour.
The prawn tempura was battered like fish and chips. I didn’t try any because I’m not a fan of tempura to begin with, but my friends didn’t enjoy it. The batter soaked up the dipping sauce and became soggy right away.
The pink lady roll was okay although I liked the negi toro roll with green onion better. Their unagi is pretty good so we ordered the dragon roll next because we were still hungry!
Our second round order was much smaller – just a little bit more to fill out our bellies! The dragon roll is for those who like unagi – my 2nd favourite roll of the evening. We also got the spicy salmon roll, which I didn’t try.
All in all, people in the restaurant seemed to be happy with their meals and I would say it was just okay. I have definitely had both better and worse sushi. For the location and the inconvenience of finding parking on Kensington Road, I expected it to be better…
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