PaiGu

I discovered Fukuichi after dining at my favourite ramen place in Singapore¹. Since my discovery, I have been there three times. It is among the priciest Japanese places I have been to in Singapore; if it weren’t for the fact that I have yet to discover a reasonably-priced quality Japanese restaurant in Singapore, I probably would not have returned to Fukuichi so many times. Alas.

The sashimi here is good, and the fish is supposedly air flown from Shizuoka, but at these prices, I’d rather go to Fish Mart Sakuraya. What I come for are their non-traditional stuff, like the seared maguro maki rolls and the almond crusted prawn tempura.

Their baked prawn is very tasty, but even more memorable is their grilled black cod with miso paste.

On the less memorable side, their Japanese-style yong tau foo was plain boring. Chicken karaage and tori katsu were standard as well.

Their dinner set bentos are very good value, and I’m told the grilled eel is remarkable.

For dessert, ice cream mochi is on the house, although I did try their peach ice cream, which had a Ferroro Rocher filling. The dessert looked more special than it tasted, but worth trying once.

The prices are quite steep, usually at $60+ per person, excluding alcohol. If you stick to the dinner set bento, you can get away with under $50 a person. The ambiance is a little casual given these prices, but service is consistently attentive. A decent place to splurge on once in a while.

Rating:

1. Sanomaru Sapporo Ramen at TripleOne Somerset [↩]

A hidden gem of a Japanese restaurant tucked away off Queen St. W., I could tell Ema Tei was a great find the moment I stepped in. The waitress bowed as she welcomed us and led us to our seats. The restaurant was long and rectangular, with a few private booths and two for group dining booths in the back with floor cushions for a more traditional feel.

Service was attentive and the food arrived quickly.

The “mystery” white fish sashimi tasted like sea perch, luscious and soft. Presentation was average, the slices could have been thinner and cleaner. There was a hint of ammonia in the aftertaste, but Toronto isn’t exactly a fishing village.

The eggplant appetizer was drenched in a delicious house sauce, although the eggplants themselves were quite runny.

The BBQ tuna roll was delicious, although it seemed that they skipped a few steps in making the sushi rice. The sushi rice had not been cooled long enough, and the vinegar-to-rice-to-sesame-seeds ratio was off.

The giant roll really was giant. It was bursting with half a dozen ingredients, including salmon roe, avocado, tobiko, and egg. When I say bursting, I mean it literally: it was hard to eat since the ingredients kept falling out. While the roll ranked low on the authenticity scale, it ranked high on the value scale.

The katsudon arrived last. It was aromatic and mouthwatering: a huge bowl of rice topped with katsu strips, caramelized onions, scrambled eggs, and green onions. It made me wish I had ordered less so I would have more room for it.

I’ve lost the photos I took for this meal, but it is definitely a place worth returning to.

Rating:

Guu Izakaya opened its doors in Toronto on December 18, 2009. Since then, Ryerson campus dwellers, the work crowd, Toronto foodies, and Vancouver expats have been pouring through its doors non-stop. From the exterior (and from the usual hour-long line-up outside its doors), the restaurant looks more like an exclusive club than a Japanese “pub”. Izakayas in Japan are affordable watering holes that also serve food for salarymen to hit up before going home. However, when I dragged my own crowd of two Vancouver and one Ottawa expats to Guu on a Saturday night¹, we were mostly interested in the food.

As soon as I pulled open the massive wooden door to its entrance, I was greeted with a loud and energetic chorus of irashaimase! from all over the restaurant. I was temporarily shell-shocked and froze in the entrance way, literally too dazed to take another step. Was this a restaurant? Was I still in Toronto? The warm, lively, chaotic scene before me seemed a world away from the wet, cold, windy, and empty street I had just left. I spotted my friends at the bar and quickly joined them.

The restaurant was not very large, but they seemed to have somehow fit a hundred people inside. The commotion of the Japanese chefs behind the bar, along with everyone else in the place, made it so loud I found it difficult to hear myself speak. Every few seconds, the entire staff would shout a chorus of Japanese together, and I would again be shocked into a daze. It took us a long time to order as the shouting made it hard to focus on the menus in front of us. Time here also seemed to go at a faster pace than the outside world. Our server came by four times before we were ready to order – it seemed like we were taking a long time when in reality, we took no more than twenty minutes. When we finished our meal (in a rather timely fashion I would say), we realized we had maxed out our two-hour time limit, but it felt like no time at all. » Read the rest of this entry «

1. It seems that weekends are not as busy as weekdays. Guu is open daily from 5 pm to midnight; if you go before 6pm, there usually isn’t a line-up. After 6 pm, on a weekday, the wait can be up to two hours. [↩]