Newmarket/Aurora doesn't have a wealth of good-quality restaurants (and I'm not trying to be a Toronto-centric snob here). I'd rather eat a paper plate than eat at Boston Pizza so I scoured the internet looking for a good asian restaurant. I came across Solo Sushi Ya and saw that it received a lot of praise.
This restaurant looks deceiving from the outside. It's tucked away in a white, dirty-looking building. Inside though, it's a comfortable, quaint restaurant.
There was a large number of us so when it came to ordering, we went through the same conversation three times. "No, you can't have that. That's for kids only. The kitchen's too busy" referring to the tempura udon (even though the menu didn't state that it was for "kids only" and when the kids in our group ordered it, we saw that it was large enough for an adult). My dad tried to order a couple of things but got shut down. After the meal, we read about how the chef likes to do the ordering for you but it's unreasonable for a restaurant to be so snotty. I also saw his comment in the Toronto Star about how "donburi is for field workers". That's pretty rude and insulting to farmers.
Despite this poor approach to servicing, we all (except for one of us) enjoyed the meal. We had this delicious daikon and shiitake little appetizer (not sure what the name of it was but came free with our meals). I had the age-dashi which had a wonderful broth and tasty crispy outer layer. The miso soup was your standard miso soup.
The vegetarian option for sushi isn't the greatest (as I'm now aware the chef probably thinks people like me who don't eat fish are scum of the earth). My vegetarian sushi consisted of the standard cucumber, avocado roll and a few inari sushi. They all tasted excellent so I was content with having the basics. I stole a noodle from the kids' udon and it was so damn good!
I would definitely come back here (though probably not with a certain member of my family who was disgruntled with the service)! Maybe next time, I can dress up like a 7 year old and try to sneak in an order of that delicious tempura udon.