Excellent food on a bed of quality with creativity on the side
Mark Laba
Province
No wonder Yang Soon Lee is smiling. Toyo Sushi’s no-nonsense approach to sushi makes it a great place to eat. Photograph by : Jason Payne, The Province
Toyo Sushi
Where: 2211 Cambie St.
Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-879-0990
Drinks: Fully licensed.
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. every day.
I’m always on the side of the little guy. Probably because I’m one of them. Back in high school, I remember the dread that washed over me when I had to make my way through Pig’s Alley, which was the name of the hallway where all the jocks had their lockers next to the gym. I don’t know how it got its name but I do know what would inevitably happen to me when I had to brave its passage.
I would be picked up and stuffed inside a locker. It was a good fit. More like a rented tux than a fitted one but me and the locker got along just fine. Sometimes I thought I should just save everyone the effort and stay in there until the end of the school year.
Unfortunately mine is not a David and Goliath story. I didn’t sling a rock and take down the giant. I just got stuffed in a locker over and over again. Along with other various humiliations. It’s kind of a metaphor for the RAV Line. Goliath earth-moving machines tear up Cambie Street and small businesses get cut down in their path. Some stand steadfast and hope for the best. Like this place. And, as locations go, this restaurant could very well be the poster child for RAV Line resistance. Penned in in every direction it seems by metal fencing with no apparent access to an entrance and the view from inside gazing out to a massive excavation, it’s a wonder this joint is still standing. Stuffed into a construction locker so to speak.
But stand it does and manages to dish up some pretty good Japanese food in the process. Paid a visit with Peaches, Small Fry Eli and his friend Aleks the Bionicle Kid. We stepped into a large room with wasabi green walls, nifty wood-walled booth seating that separates packs of diners from each other and all the usual Japanese knickknacks and arty trappings, plus two large flat screen TVs slanting down from the ceiling. There was a certain irony as the TV broadcast a golf game, lush rolling greens set against a window-view backdrop of chunks of concrete, twisted rebar, mounds of urban dirt and heavy machinery. And yet somehow the setting still maintained a tranquility though it was a Sunday, so no construction was going on.
We began with gyoza and the spicy tuna salad (both $3.95) that was a little startling visually with its generous hunks of raw tuna, flaps of iceberg lettuce and thin noodles in a spicy red sauce that appeared radioactive. My fears were assuaged once I tasted the concoction with its hint of sesame and, despite the foreboding colour, really full of delicate flavours.
Small Fry Eli and the Bionicle Kid had their hearts set on chicken teriyaki ($9.95) and as Aleks put it best, “I don’t know what you’re going to rate this place but the chicken deserves an A.”
Next up were the various sushi variations beginning with three maki sushi rolls. A yam tempura construction ($2.95) was excellent and the classic Dynamite ($4.95) with prawn tempura and avocado and the ubiquitous California ($3.95) followed suit.
The salmon nigiri ($1.75 per piece) displayed a fresh and glistening pink toupee of fish draped over rice and a temaki prawn schlimazel ($2.95) was like a shrimp and seaweed ice cream cone, which I don’t believe is one of the Baskin and Robbins 31 flavours.
Essentially this is no-nonsense sushi that doesn’t compromise quality and even manages a little creativity both in presentation and in special rolls like the Crazy or Red Dragon or the Kochuran sporting crabmeat and deep-fried salmon. And you have to hand it to this restaurant that in the onslaught of construction this place is as tenacious as a fish fighting at the end of a hook.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
The meat and potatoes of the sushi world that’s bound to please.
RATINGS: Food: B+ Service: A Atmosphere: B
© The Vancouver Province 2008