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| - Overall, I was a little disappointed after our first and probably only visit to Nami Friday night. It was recommended to us as one of the better Japanese restaurants in Toronto. (We were in for the Rod Stewart/Stevie Nicks concert at ACC) The decor is kind of touristy cutsey, the servers are all in little matching kimonoes. It's a style. We were seated in one of the little enclosed booths with another couple.
My husband is new to the world of sushi, so we started off with a spicy tuna roll, which he loves. He enjoyed this one as much as the ones at home. He was a little frustrated with the dearth of selection of "non-seafood/sashimi" items. The only poultry selections were dark meat chicken. He does like dark meat chicken. I know there are cultural tastes (and I personally like dark meat); I don't know if this is Japanese or Canadian. He maybe could have ordered one of the set dinners for two with me, but I love sushi so that's what I was planning on. So he ordered the beef teriyaki, medium rare. It came with miso soup and salad. I ordered the Sushi Moriawase. (I would have just gone with the sashimi, but I wanted DH to try and I knew he'd have to have some rice to make it not so scary.)
First of all, my sushi was excellent. Beautiful plating, the flying fish roe was gorgeous, like tiny ruby jewels and popped in my mouth like pop rocks. Everything was fresh and yummy. Only disappointment was the mackerel. I'd never had that before and it was just plain nasty and fishy, but that's a personal taste thing, I am sure.
The miso soup was not too salty at all, a common problem.
So that's what we liked.
What we didn't like. We were rushed from the moment we were seated. The restaurant was half empty, but our waitress acted like she needed to turn the table NOW! We'd barely sat and looked at the drinks list and she was asking for our appetizer and drinks order. We asked for a few more minutes and she returned in three, so my husband hastily chose a glass of wine and I just went with water and we quick chose the spicy tuna roll as a starter.
We had the tuna roll within moments (I didn't feel as if it was freshly made in that time, or else the sushi chefs at our local are very slooooow!) and hardly had we taken a couple of bites when she wanted our entree orders. As I said, I ordered the Sushi Moriawase and DH the beef teriyaki. Our soups arrived---yum! DH got salad; I did not. His was iceberg lettuce awash in a pale, liquidy dressing of no particular flavor with a couple of paper-thin slices of radish. It was VERY messy to eat, dressing was everywhere. He'd hardly finished half his soup and salad and I was just about a third of the way into my soup when our entrees arrived. (I HATE the main dish being served when I am still trying to eat my starter---it's so rude and shows such poor timing in the kitchen) Like I said, my meal was enjoyable---DH...oh dear. His meat was over-cooked to a dull gray, and had the tenderness of old shoe leather, except for the couple of pieces that were essentially blobs of fat. If that was prime Black Angus beef, Nami committed a grievous crime to it.
The only time our server returned was to drop off the bill, while we were in the midst of our meal!!! The she hovered just at the edge of sight-line while we uncomfortably finished our meal and picked up the ticket. As soon as we had, she showed up with her little credit card machine. (Now that IS clever--have never seen in the States!) We handed over our credit card, signed, and she started removing the plates and serving pieces from the table. My husband still had a few bites of beef on his plate (but he didn't want the gristly stuff anyhow) but I would have liked to have finished the tuna roll that had come with my meal, but at that point, I was pretty disgusted and wanted to leave.
All in all, we dropped about $100 Can$ there in and felt hustled out in less than an hour.
Now to be fair, maybe this is culturally Canadian---this kind of promptness is considered good service, though I have not experienced it during stays in BC or AB---but styles can be regional too, I suppose.
I would recommend Nami for the sushi, but not for the other dishes and certainly not for the dining experience. It wasn't fun or relaxing.
(And I am still wondering about the freshness of that mackerel.)
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