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| - My wife and I recently had dinner at this newly opened All You Can Eat Sushi place in Leaside. They have a full a la carte menu as well with a bigger variety, but we decided to give the AYCE a try.
It's a new place just two doors down from the Hollywood Gelato in what used to be another asian restaurant (Asian Bowl maybe?). It has room for 36 people since it only has 18 tables for two (yes, we counted) and no sushi bar, but the decor seemed quite nice and basic. It's new so it's also very clean, even the washrooms, which are down the stairs near the back of the restaurant. They were very clean although quite small with room for just one person at a time.
The AYCE menu has a lunch option which I believe was $14 and dinner was $20 with an extra $2 on weekends and holidays. The big difference was that dinner included Sashimi and a few other things like desserts. Like most AYCE places these days, the menu is a large single sheet that you keep ordering off of. Unlike some of the other AYCE places we've been to with bigger menus and larger selections, California Roll had a more limited menu, but really made up for it in other ways.
The staff, including the owner, are incredibly attentive and service was faster and more efficient than anything we've experienced in a Toronto in years. Granted, we went for dinner at 5:30 p.m. on a week night and the restaurant was only half full, but it still impressed us. Our Green tea was never allowed to go below half a cup before being refreshed and all we had to do was pick up the menu and start talking about something before there was someone there to take our order.
We made sure to eat a lot of the Sashimi, and it was amazing, especially the Red Snapper and Sea Clam. We also tried lots of the Salmon and Tuna. We had a few rolls and some Salmon, Tuna, and Red Snapper Sushi, but really concentrated on the Sashimi since it was so delicious, fresh and sweet. This was definitely the freshest fish I'd ever had at an AYCE place, which made it so different from the many other places we'd been to in the GTA like Kaze or Maison de Japan where we've even had fish delivered to our table that was still partially frozen. Yuck! The fish at California Roll was so good that this was the first time I'd ever Sushi and Sashimi without any Soy & Wasabi. The presentation was also very beautiful and was much more of what you'd expect at the high end Japanese places. The portions were small in order to prevent waste, but since it's AYCE, who cares!
Apart from the Sashimi and Sushi, we tried a couple of rolls which were typical of any other AYCE place, but also a Seaweed Salad, an Avocado Salad that melted in my mouth, Teriyaki Chicken that was tender and delicious, a Sirloin with mushroom dish, curry dishes that had a delicious buttery flavor, Tempura dishes including a plate of lightly battered Onion Rings which were great, and a Cheese Wonton that was an unexpected treat. For dessert we had the Fried Ice Cream which only comes in Green Tea flavour and the Tempura battered and fried Banana with Honey. Both were good, but the amount of Green Tea Ice Cream was tiny and could have used a much bigger scoop so the it wouldn't be so overwhelmed by the Tempura batter surrounding it.
I had a Kirin beer and my wife had warm Sake which both seemed reasonably priced (around $4 or $5 I think), with a total bill of just over $60 before tip. Our previous favorite in the GTA had been Kaze, but rather than trekking all the way up to Elgin Mills and Bayview anymore we'll be staying south of Eglinton for our new favorite AYCE place.
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