素聞千里

Since I mentioned about 素聞千里 last time, might as well write a review about it too. Of all the vegetarian restaurants I've been to, I must say I do think this is my favourite one.

I think the most special thing about this vegetarian restaurant is they serve vegetarian sushi, aka fake sushi/sashimi. And it actually tastes really good, they make it so the texture is actually quite similar.

This is one of my favourite dishes that I always order when I go, Valcano Sushi.

They have these chewy pieces on the top, which is supposed to be fake squid. They add the spicy mayo sauce, mocking the spicy salmon sauce idea. Pretty good.

My brother tried their Uni sushi. Even though I'm not a fan of uni and knowing this is only fake uni, I still didn't try. But doesn't it look so real? The texture wasn't as soggy as normal uni though.

Another one of their sushi rolls. The salmon texture is quite similar to real salmon, which I found impressive.

As for lunch specials, just from looking at the portion it's already a lot more than what they give you at 天之雨素食料理, considering the price is similar too. 

This is the porkchop egg rice.

This dish was actually pretty good. They really tried to make it similar to the japanese porkchop egg rice dish. Looks good, tastes good.

If you order the Bento lunches, there's more variety. This is the fake black cod.

The cod tastes really good. It has the crispy yet soft texture. 

I tried their roasted pork (燒肉) before too, but can't find a picture of it in my album. Of course it can't be comparable to real roasted pork, but it still tasted special and different. They actually made it so there is a layer of the 'fat' in between the meat and the skin, but of course in this case you can eat the entire piece without having to pick out the fat since its all fake. XD

Food: Very Good

Service: Alright

Price: A bit above average compared to other vegetarian cuisines, but I think their food is worth the price.

Atmosphere/Decoration: Nothing special, but the furniture is still quite new. The restaurant has a lot of Buddha decoration I would say.

Overall: I would definitely recommend this place to those who are looking for a decent vegetarian restaurant. I tend to go there often when my mom is having her vegetarian days, and it's close to where I live.

素聞千里 Joe Yee Vegetarian Cuisine

9688 Leslie Street, Unit 17-18, Richmond Hill

天之雨素食料理

There used to be a shanghai restaurant that sucked at the corner at Commerce Gate. It got replaced by a vegetarian restaurant. As usual, my mom wanted to go give it a try.

I personally think their lunch specials are not worth it. Or maybe it's because I'm not a fan of rice, so I feel like the portion is too small and not enough. Lunch specials were around $10, no drinks included.

fake Eel with rice.

This dish was fail. The piece of fake eel was SO rough and hard to chew. I would have literally needed a knife to cut it into smaller pieces. If anything, anyone would think the texture of fish would be soft and easy to chew, but I suppose I shouldn't have expected that for the fake one.

fake BBQ Pork with rice.

I think this was the best dish taste-wise.

fake Peking Duck with rice

This dish was a rip-off. So the so called "peking duck" was basically a fried crunchy piece, there wasn't even any fake duck meat attached to it. So basically if you were to order this dish alone, it would be cried pieces with rice = = what a lunch huh?

Ham and Cheese wrap, an appetizer (around $6?)

This tasted pretty good, but then again it was simple. The best part of course was the "酥皮" (pastry wrap). It was really flaky, and the fake ham actually tasted like ham.

fake beef noodles. (牛肉炒河)

This dish was normal, no comment. Can't really go wrong with noodles. But this dish definitely wasn't worth $12.

Food: Alright.

Service: Alright

Price: a bit above average compared to other vegetarian restaurants.

Atmosphere/Decoration: like any normal restaurant, nothing special.

Overall: I would not go back. If you really do want vegetarian cuisine there are better places, and considering the portions and price is just not worth it. I would rather spend the money eating at 素聞千里.

天之雨素食料理 Senwell Vegetarian Cuisine

505 Highway 7 East, Unit 98-99 (Commerce Gate)

Shisho Tree

It's been a long time since I updated my blog! Went on vacation to Hong Kong, and was just busy when I got back. But no worries, I'm back. I would never give up on blogging about yummy food :)

My best friend was going back to HK for good, and we decided to have our one on one farewell dinner here at Shisho Tree. She told me it was pasta made in japanese style. Sounds interesting huh?

Pastas come with Salad. Very ordinary, nothing special. 

However if you added $4 to your pasta,  you would get soup and a slice of cake too. I believe the cakes are from J-Town supermarket, which are good as well.

I ordered the Okonomiyai Pasta, seemed special so I had to give it a try. ($16)

It really had the okonomiyaki tasted to it. First time having this flavour of pasta, it was really good. I would definitely recommend trying this.

My friend ordered the "Smoked Salmon a la creme Vokda" pasta.

The vodka taste wasn't heavy and could barely taste it.

Food: Pretty Good. 

Service: Good.

Price: If you want to try the special types of pasta, then you should expect the price to be 15+ for a dish. If not, the pastas from the menu start at $9.

Atmosphere/Decoration: The place is kind of hidden, not really a noticeable place. It's quiet, a good place to bring someone if you want to chat. The decoration isn't fancy or anything though.

Overall: The place is really nice and I think the food is quite special, at least first place I know that serves pasta Japanese style. I would like to come back and try their other pasta flavours, and if it wasn't because I ate icecream before going, I would have ordered their set and have a slice of their cake. :P

Shisho Tree, Pasta & Cafe

3160 Steeles Ave E, (Inside J-Town Plaza)

Koganei Japanese Seafood Restaurant

After a long drive all the way to brampton with my bro to drop something off, us 2 hungry pigs went to have sushi again on our way home. Yes, another night of sushi. It's like sushi galore weekend.

Their menu was really nice, lots of appealing pictures making me wanting to try everything. They serve Surf Clam sashimi, even abalone sashimi priced seasonally. But no, we did not try that lol. My bro was paying again and after yesterday's bill, I didn't request on wanting to order anything specific today.

We ordered a sashimi and sushi combo $29.99 claiming to serve 2 people.

I thought it was quite decent considering the variety of different fishes served. The red snapper sashimi was surprisingly pretty good, a lot more texture than the crappy ones at Gal's or other normal sushi restaurants. All the fishes were fresh in general. They served the fatty tuna too! Surprisingly there was no unagi though.

The black cod.

This was really good. The texture was really soft and sweet, the taste was really close to the one I had in Vancouver. As always, the portion was small. This 'delicate' dish was $8 I think?

Stir-fried Clams

I think this is the first time I've seen this dish at a japanese restaurant, kinda surprised my bro decided to order it. But it did taste really good, the sauce was a bit spicy. The clams were big, chubby and fat. Oh and juicy too.

Steamed Egg?

I'm not quite sure the actual name of this dish. But it was basically steamed egg with seafood inside. There was shrimp, veggies, squid, and chicken. It was a bit tasteless and really relied on the seafood to bring in the taste. This was $5.

Food: Pretty good.
Service: Not bad. The place was freezing cold so I asked them if they could turn down the ac a bit. In the end they completely turned it off. Kinda made me feel bad...
Price: It depends what you order. If you went for a la carte then it would end up being pricy. Otherwise, ordering the sashimi/sushi combos is a good deal considering their variety of fishes, and for good quality too.
Atmosphere/Decoration: The location is a bit random since it was the first floor of an office building. But inside does look nice and cozy.
Overall: This place kinda reminds me of Izakaya Tsuki, good quality. I would like to come back to try more of their appetizers.

Koganei Japanese Seafood Restaurant

3901 Highway 7, Vaughan

Tokyo Sushi House

After seeing a friend post fb pictures of the sushi from this restaurant, I desperately wanted to try. And after nagging my bro for a day, I finally got him to take me there for some delicious sushi.

A really interesting fact: this is the first japanese restaurant that I've been to that didn't serve cooked food. Well there was soup udon or soba, but it would only come with veggies, no meat. The place didn't seem to serve any hot food with meat.

I found this interesting. Spicy Girl Hand Roll.

I wanted to try it but selected other things instead, maybe next time. The best way to try the restaurant is to order a la carte. And like very traditional japanese restaurants, they posted this picture teaching you how to eat sushi properly.

Yes, my bro and I both ate the sushi with our hands. :)

From left to right, the far left is torched tuna sushi. The middle is "Tai" (Red Snapper), but torched as well. And on the far right is Hamachi sushi.

These were all really good. I personally liked the Tai the most. When I first saw it, I totally didn't recognize the fish. The texture of the fish tasted a lot better torched compared to normal raw red snappers.

I ordered a spicy salmon handroll.

This wasn't that great. It's quite different compared to the normal spicy salmon taste. One thing was it wasn't spicy, and it was wrapped with a lot of veggies.

I think the sweet shrimp looks the most attractive rite now.

Both on the left are hotategei sushi. Top left being the full raw scallop sushi, and bottom left chopped scallop pieces mixed with mayo. And stating the obvious, the two other sushis were the sweet shrimp. And of course, the huge headed shrimp one tasted better. Really fresh and tastey.

Tobiko/Masago and Salmon Roe sushi wrapped with Salmon and Quail's egg.

This tasted very different but good, never tried something like this before. I would recommend trying this one. We ordered one, not sure if they come in pairs? We were charged $8 for this dish though. The disappointing thing was, the presentation of the one I saw from my friend's fb pictures looked a lot better than how it does here.

Food: Really good.
Service: Good. One thing I would mention is, they gave us more sushi than what we ordered. We sat at the sushi bar so we placed our orders directly to the sushi chef instead of the waitress. Not sure if he remembered incorrectly, but he made extra sushi that we didnt order which was added to our bill. He was making them already so it would cause an awkward scene to tell him to stop making it because we didn't order it, so we let it go. He also asked if we wanted miso soup. Silly us thought it was for free, but that was also added to our bill as well.
Price: Quite expensive, but then again it depends what and how you order. But then again, their quality is worth their price.
Atmosphere/Decoration: Not much decoration, the place is really small too. I think there were only 4 tables and the sushi bar. A quite not noticable location but surprisingly pretty packed. We waited 20 mins for a seat. Interesting fact was also that everyone seated or coming in were all non-asians.
Overall: I really liked my experience here and would recommend others to come try.

Tokyo Sushi House

33 St Joseph St, Downtown Toronto

富豪名廚

Where should I begin? The story starts from back in first year uni when I always went to a restaurant 真之味. Since my family and I went there often, we got to know the boss, which was the main chef as well. The boss makes the BEST 豬軟骨 I've ever had. Later the restaurant didn't mange to survive and closed down. Wasn't until a few months later my parents and I spotted the boss working at a restaurant in the plaza across from Pacific Mall, on silver blvd. Later on that placed closed down again and he moved to a corner spot at FMP. Later, the place closed down again. Finally, almost half a year later we found him at this restaurant, 富豪名廚 on major mac, so close to home! In conclusion, I seem to always be running around searching for this chef's 豬軟骨!

Everytime I go to this place, I always order that same dish.

豬軟骨飯. Tenderous Rib with rice.

 

This is really good, no lies. The meat is much more tender than the ones at Ajisen ramen. Normally whenever I do order tenderous ribs, I tend to NOT eat the bones even though they are edible. However, I always eat the whole thing here! I prefer rice more than noodles so I order it with rice. The sauce is really declicious and I think goes better with rice so the taste won't be mixed with the soup base. Also because  豬軟骨飯 is part of their lunch special for $6.99 including soup and drink. The 豬軟骨拉麵 (tenderous rib ramen) is a separate order and priced $6.99 with just the meat and noodles. However, my mom and brother both prefer the ramen instead. They claim the ramen tastes a lot better than Ajisen, and the portion is bigger too.

The soup that comes with the meal is good, but nothing special. 

Maybe I should try something else the next time I come. My brother said he went once ordering their fish stone pot? It was good and the sauce was tastey. Only bad thing was there were fish bones. (He assumed there wouldn't be any.)

Food: Good.
Service: Good.
Price: The pricing is average, but I think they should lower the prices a bit considering their location isn't that great.

Atmosphere/Decoration: The place is really small, probably not even 10 tables?

Overall: I highly recommend trying their 豬軟骨! Trust, I haven't had better anywhere else.

富豪名廚

1380 Major Mackenzie Dr E (at the corner beside SNAP Fitness)

麗莎餐廳

Of all the chinese restaurants (茶餐廳) I've been to, I think this is the best one I've had so far. Their food is decent quality at cheap prices. I haven't yet tried something there that I didn't like.

豬排湯麵. Porkchop noodles.

My mom always likes ordering this, but I do agree their porkchops are really good. I think its the way they marinate it. The meat is not tough at all either.

葡國雞飯 Portuguese chicken rice.

My all time favourite. As of all the places I've been, I have never tasted a better portugese chicken rice than here. I love the sauce, rich and creamy. Highly recommend this dish.

豉椒排骨 Stir-fried Pork Ribs in Black Bean Sauce

This is good too, but the last time I had it the ribs were a bit chewy and tough. I really get the home-y feeling whenever I have this dish there.

Their chef's specials for lunch range from $4.99 to $5.99 with soup, main dish, and a drink. The breakfast meals are even cheaper. Most of their breakfast meals come with an egg sandwich. Their egg sandwich is one of the best I've had too. The texture of the egg is moist and smooth, and thick too. I recommend that as well.

Food: Very good.
Service: Good.
Price: Cheap.

Atmosphere/Decoration: like any typical chinese restaurant.
Overall: I really like this place and I go there often. Their food is good with big portions too, at least I can never finish my dish.

麗莎餐廳

360 Highway 7 East, Richmond Hill (beside Yoga Tree)