Yamamoto Japanese Cuisine (Warden Avenue and Finch Avenue East)

Yamamoto Japanese Cuisine

What do you do when your best friend’s back in The 6ix? You spend hours at an All You Can Eat sushi restaurant catching up, of course. She actually came back last Saturday but because of our busy schedules meeting up was actually such a mission. No complaints though, she just extended her vacation and there’s still a few more days before she flies away.

Dessert

I hadn’t been to Briddlewood Mall in a long time so I was pretty amazed that they had a few restaurants inside now. We ended up going to Yamamoto Japanese Cuisine on a whim because it was really close to her house. The place is huge and it’s different from all other sushi All You Can Eat restaurants because their menu offers a large variety of unique dishes. For example, their dessert menu doesn’t just have the plain old ice cream and fried banana option, there were like 4 different kinds of mouses, Crème Brulee, etc. …Just a little disclaimer though, all the deserts sucked except for maybe the Mango Yogurt and I have to say the Crème Brûlée ...that was exceptionally good. They also have over 40 different types of sushi and 30 varieties of rolls and hand rolls to choose from.

Snow Season Roll, Tempura, Grilled Eggplant

Squid Balls

Being All You Can Eat, we tried so many different things but some of the appetizers we enjoyed included the Seaweed Salad, which tasted great for being loaded with nutrients, Grilled Eggplant, which was full of flavour and served with onion flakes on top, and a first for me Squid Balls. Squid Balls are apparently a super popular and more of an expensive street food and I LOVED it. They’re basically a ball of squid and shrimp that’s coated with breadcrumbs and deep fried, seriously amazing.

The Tempura items were all light as a feather. They offer a different variety, obviously including various vegetables, shrimp and even calamari. The shrimp tempura was soooooo good. The crust was nice and airy while being perfectly crispy and non greasy. Of course the tempura items were served with the classic tempura sauce which had a perfect balance and elevated the nice sweetness of the fried goodies. Sushi, sashimi, spring rolls, I basically just dipped everything in that stuff.

Snow Season Roll

One of our favourite dishes overall was the Snow Season Roll, which had spicy salmon, shrimp tempura, various vegetables inside a rice paper wrapper doused with Sriracha mayo and oyster sauce… kind of like an elevated summer roll. My mouth is watering just thinking about this roll.

Jade Roll

Another stand out was the Jade Roll, which had salmon sashimi, imitation crab, a creamy sauce and it was all wrapped inside a cucumber slice in place of seaweed paper. We were impressed at how delicate and artistic this roll was for something on an All You Can Eat menu.

Sashimi

Sashimi

They apparently import their seafood fresh daily from Japan, so it was no surprise that the Sashimi was incredible. They offer everything from salmon to surf clam and even octopus. I really enjoyed a particular sashimi, which was the “Herb Salmon”, they toss the salmon sashimi in a lemon, herb and oil mixture before serving… think ceviche, mmmm. And it’s strange because usually when I have sashimi, my stomach goes a little wonky and though I ate a lot, nothing even happened to me. I’m so surprised they can offer such high quality fish for All You Can Eat.

Black Dragon Maki Roll

Sushi

Hand Rolls

All the Sushi and Hand Rolls were well seasoned and had perfect sushi rice. I mention the rice because I find a lot of Japanese places have remarkable potential but then their rice recipe just ruins everything. Good sushi rice holds its shape, while sticking together without being gummy or loosing its texture. This place does not underwhelm, their perfectly cooked and seasoned rice works so well with all their offerings.

Scallop Cutlet, Veggie Springrolls, Seafood Ramen

Though basically everything we ordered was delicious, I’m not going to go on and on describing everything we ate, ain’t nobody got time for that. The last thing I am going to mention however is something you should just steer clear of, besides the sucky desserts, this was just absolutely terrible. I was in the mood for soup so I ordered a Seafood Ramen and it was so disappointing. There was no seafood flavour, just this weird salsa flavour. The noodles were also overcooked and for the amount of noodles in the dish there was like no seafood… I think there was like one shrimp. Anyways we just couldn’t eat more than one bite of it.

Overall, it was really nice to see my friend and catch up. She also got us lots of treats from Dubai and I’ve been basically binging on chocolate covered dates since. It’s funny how certain people leave and come back after a long time, yet it still feels like you can talk to them like they never left. But yeah anyways, if you’re ever just driving past Briddlewood Mall, I would definitely recommend this place. I actually can’t wait to mention this place next time someone asks me to go for All You Can Eat sushi.

Have a Nice Day… or should I say “Have a Rice Day” LOL,

Naheeda

“Making sushi is an art, and experience is everything.” ~Nobu Matsuhisa

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