| rev:text
| - I'd like to preface this review by saying that I, as a whole, go into AYCE sushi restaurants lower standards than other sushi places. I almost strictly prefer to order a la cart, as I find it has the highest chance of having the freshest fish used, properly vinegared rice with a good ratio of rice to filling. My forays into AYCE places are often not of my own volition - going for the sake of good company rather than mind-blowing food!
Me and five friends went in for a Friday reservation, for 1:00 in the afternoon. Stepping in, I thought the restaraunt was pretty big - especially considering it's on the fourth floor of a building. Walking to our table, I realized that there was another section of seats around a wall! I felt sorry for the kitchen staff - AYCE sounds bad enough to keep up with orders, but when you have dozens and dozens of tables to stay on top of, there better be a huge kitchen! getting seated and being handed an iPad with a glossy white cover, I began my foray into one of the better AYCE establishments in Toronto.
Prior to coming in to the restaurant, my only knowledge of it coming in was "That AYCE Sushi place with the iPads". The former made me think of subpar food, and the latter made me think of a gimmick that was mostly to make the restaurant stand out. Seeing iPads chained to stands with games like "Candy Crush Saga" and "Flappy Bird" available to play started to reinforce the latter assumption of mine.
When I was seated and saw the iPad menu in action, I was actually quite impressed with the innovation of sorts that came from the iPad. Pictures of each item, quantities of how much of each item per order and a list of ingredients presented itself. This is very beneficial both to those who are new to the food (knowing the differences of different rolls, etc), and those who are battle hardened sushi eating veterans (knowing whether or not you get 1 per order or 6 per order).
I had the silly misconception that the kitchen had a live feed of what we input onto the iPad. While dilly-dallying for 5 or 10 minutes, a friend of mine informed me that you have to press a button to call a server. Oops?
With the slick and shimmer of the iPad menu away from my hands, I came back to the realization that, Yes, Spring Sushi indeed is an AYCE establishment. With it, comes many things to expect (which indeed came into fruition that very afternoon). Here's my laundry list of AYCE annoyances:
- Missing orders: though they had the iPad to help them, it still didn't save them from falling prey to this classic problem. One HUGE plus that I have to give to the place was that our waitress went out of her way to check up on us, see if we got all of our orders, et cetera. Sure, it still took a bit of time on our sweet potato tempura even after our second round came through, but with a huge space like this, I'd imagine the fryer would be frying non-stop.
- Odd amounts: 6 orders of Shrimp Tempura (which the iPad states give you 2 per order) should not lead us to getting 8 pieces, with two of them being fought over a la roshambo!
- Inconsistent Food: I will admit that Spring Sushi is, in my opinion, the most consistently acceptable AYCE place in terms of food quality. Though in the end you're paying for quantity and not quality (the large amount of rice in each roll), the food was still mostly pleasant. My issue was that some of the rice was warm, some if it was cool, a lot of it was underseasoned. Some sushi were well formed, others fell apart, others had too much rice, others had a good amount. With the huge volume of people to serve and even larger amount of orders being made, there's just a limit as to how good the food can be. Also, they're not going to spend the time remaking a roll that is normally subpar due to the work they have in front of them, comparing to when one orders a la cart.
As a general rule specific to Spring Sushi, the cooked items (especially the grilled/fried) were much more satisfying than the raw ones, and the ramen was salty with bland noodles, though I'm a sucker for Char siu and pork in general.
When we reached the point where we ended up wanting to keel over and rot away at some desolate corner of the world, we ordered dessert for one last hurrah. My friends were exclaiming how the Mango Ice Cream was so much more creamier/flavorful than other Japanese restaraunts, but I don't partake in mango ice cream myself and cannot substantiate these claims. My Green Tea wasn't cloyingly sweet, which I found great. When it came time to get the bill, the total came to around $20 after taxes.
That brings me to question: what is the value of a bloated stomach, a somewhat happy palette and the visceral joy of playing around with an iPad menu? Honestly, without the great company, I myself wouldn't choose to come back to Spring Sushi. However, with the right people, and if I'm particularly famished, I would quite possibly come back to Spring Sushi.
3.5/5 - closer to a 3 than a 4.
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