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| - As I was going through writing a few generally unfavorable reviews for other restaurants (especially the Japanese ones) I was starting to miss having good Japanese food. So in a whim I decided to take the 25 minute drive north from home to one of the better Japanese restaurants that I know of: Solo Sushi-Ya at Newmarket.
Full Disclosure: I'm a "regular" here for a while so the head chef/owner, Jyo-san, knows me already and has greeted me even if I hadn't been here for over a year.
So coming here I knew I wanted one dish that he specializes in: the seafood motoyaki. The question was: should I cheap out and just get a chiraishi don for filler to splurge a bit and get the omakase (which today was a bit more expensive $65 because he had a special dish). Well since this was a solo-run, meaning I don't really care how much I spend (most of my non-foody friends would balk at the cost). If it were another place I would balk too, but I've been coming here enough to trust the chef on his omakase, I am rarely disappointed.
Jyo-san's omakase is generally a "surprise" unlike others that lists what their omakase consists of. Jyo usually tells us what the feature dish is though, but the rest is whatever he thinks based on some personal requirements. I had only two: I want the seafood motoyaki and there better be no uni (sea urchin).
The meal started out with three appetizers with a nice table set. The appetizers consisted of: edamame in some sauce, some veggies and some meat in sauce. I forgot to ask what exactly they are, but suffice to say they were all good. The edamame in sauce was a unique take from my regular edamame which is just boiled and served and was easily my favorite over the three.
I then got served with the main entree: fish pate. I took a small scoop of it and put it in my mouth. As it entered my mouth, I can already smell the scent of the fish. As I chewed it a little and settle on my mouth, it felt like a sort of pudding (only a bit tougher) and every bite was giving more of the fish scent, without the flakiness of real fish meat or the sliminess of fish belly. The chef explained to me that this is his own style and made it himself, and since the other places where I had fish pate never tasted this good, I guess it's true.
Then I got some sashimi: tuna, tataki, salmon and a large shrimp, with the house soy sauce. Fresh as usual. Nothing much to say here, probably because my mood wasn't into the raw fish. However, the large raw shrimp tasted sweet, not too many places serve it raw, most of them cook it or serve a joke-only size. It has a refreshing feel to the mouth when you eat it raw.
Coming up was seafood steamed egg. Although it can't match my mom's steamed egg (that's still my favorite), Sushi-ya still has one of the better and more meaty ones when it comes to seafood steamed egg. Gives your tummy a warmed up feeling to make yourself ready for more warm dishes. Much better than the staple: miso soup.
Now for my requested main dish: Seafood tataki. I am not sure if it is still in the menu, but whenever I go there I almost always order this. It is seafood with spicy sauce, baked on a half shell. That one really hit the spot. I can't say much about it since I just wolfed the thing down. The dish has a bit of kick, but I was taking it and even asked for a spoon to scoop up some of the burned parts. Mmm, nom nom.
I then got my shrimp head from before deep fried and still presented nicely to me. That was yummy, it was crunchy so you eat the whole thing, shell and all. You have to eat this thing in small chunks, but I did it wrong, I ate the antenna side first, I think I should've eaten the back first since it was so large.
For my filler plate, I got some nigiri sushi. Not much to say, it's just good to have it at this point because you want to try to fill the rest of the empty space in your belly.
Last, but not least, I finish the meal off with dessert. For dessert, he provided me with fruit and mini rice puff on coffee pudding. The coffee taste felt cool refreshing, it didn't have cream to make it feel heavy so it finishes off my meal very nicely. Though, I think the coffee had kept me up the rest of the night, so I guess it is made of real coffee then.
I have discovered this place over a decade ago with a couple of friends. Overall, if I have a lot of money or if I just want to have good Japanese food, this is still the place I would go to up until now. In general, don't let the fact that this is in Newmarket throw you off. It may be far distance-wise, but it is not much time-wise (in comparison to suffering to look for parking in Downtown Toronto or some other places. It's a great place to take your significant other on a food trip.
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