Posted by Melissa Woycechowsky in japanese, restaurant review on March 25, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Sushi Island
571 College Street
(416) 535-1515
dinner for two with sake, tax and tip: $60
Sushi Island serves what I call “novelty sushi”. It is comfort food that I keep coming back to. Sushi purists should probably look elsewhere. But if you enjoy creative maki rolls, it’s a fine place to eat.
I almost didn’t write a review of this place. It’s crowded enough, and seems to get more and more crowded. On weekend evenings, the wait can be over an hour. It’s a very uncomfortable wait too - people are packed into a long narrow area by the front door. I love the food here, but it’s not worth waiting for an hour. I recommend going for lunch or an early dinner when there’s no wait. Another option is take out, which is twenty percent off the menu price.
My favourite item is the crunchy roll. It’s made with salmon, avocado, tobiko, and crunchy tempura bits. In addition to the main crunchy roll, there are two vegetarian versions, one with tofu and one with tempura yam.
All sushi can be made with brown rice, which includes seaweed bits and black sesame seeds in addition to the brown rice. This costs .25 extra per order, even on the all-you-can-eat menu. Many rolls come with mayonnaise, which they will leave off upon request.
The all-you-can-eat menu choices are very popular, and are a great deal. It is not a buffet, all the food is prepared to order and brought to your table. If you only want maki rolls, it’s $12.99, everything on the menu with the exception of nigiri and sashimi is $16.99, and the entire menu with the exception of uni, hamachi, unagi sashimi and grilled eel is $20.99.
Sushi Island has many vegetarian choices. There are thirteen types of vegetarian maki and twelve vegetarian items on the appetizer menu. The all-yam tempura is a favourite of mine.
Tonight I had the all-you-can-eat maki including an order of crunchy rolls, a rainbow roll, beef teriyaki rolls, Canadian fireworks rolls (salmon, tempura mushrooms, avocado and seven spices) vegetarian crunchy roll, green salad with ginger dressing, miso soup, green tea and two orders of saki. The total was $26.35 including tax.
Though I had a huge meal there earlier today, writing this review and looking at their menus is making me want to go back.
the atmosphere was great, the food was excellent and the service was excellent i would definetly come back again and it would be an honor to invite my friends to let them know about this place ....the waitress was great she worked really hard and deserves alot thank you miss waitress for your excellent service
Chris
katigbakc@hotmail.com
Some friends recommended this place so we went to try it out for a birthday celebration.Huge dissapointment!There were a few prices for AYCE so we chose the most expensive one at $20.99 ($22.99 because we were there on a weekend) because we wanted sashimi.The manager was shockingly rude!One of the first sentences she said to welcome us was "You are given 1 1/2 hours to order & eat & then you have to leave because it is packed today". We understood there is usually a time limit to AYCE but saying it in such a rude way before you even sit down is just plain rude!Then, we tried to order 30 pieces of salmon sashimi for 8 and the manager said, "I think 30 pieces is too much. Why don't you try take 15 instead?" So we decided to be nice and was okay with the salmon and we proceed to order 20 pieces of red snapper on top of the salmon and she said, "Why don't you order other types of sashimi and less of this because you have to take other customers and tables into consideration". At this point, we were like "What?!". First, we have to be told in a rude way that we have to finish 1 1/2 hours on the dot. Second, she cuts down the portion on whatever we want to order and third, we have to take other customers/tables into consideration on what we want to eat?Geez how ridiculous!Needless to say, at this point we decided that we had enough and walked out of the restaurant. I have never been to a restaurant that is so rude and arrogant in my life. When we told her we had enough and we were leaving she said "FINE!" like it doesn't really matter anyways. Think twice before you go to this place! Even if the food is good, with such service you don't really have any appetite left to eat at the end!
went to Sushi Island the other day for the first time, and said to myself that it will be my last time there.
Contrary to what some people were saying, I didn't have much problems with the service. They were not super-quick and they did forget my order at one point (which happened to be my most expensive order that night), but overall service was acceptable.
No I didn't expect Kaji quality sushi, after all, this is AYCE. For example, their gari (pickled ginger) was very bad... not crunchy at all, but this was expected, that they probably would be buying the cheapest pickled ginger and cheapest tea leaves to cut on the costs. Fine.
But at the same time I know what to expect of a 'decent' sushi joint, AYCE or not.
The quality of the dishes - UGH. Even for an AYCE, it was too bad. I had better sushi at Mariko (which I also plan not to return).
We were a group of 3 and did the most expensive option so we could try everything.
I can understand that they would still have restrictions on the most expensive option, like a maximum of 2 orders of maguro (though I was only allowed 1), no hamachi (or was it no hirame?), no uni, no unagi sashimi and so on. But they were also out of MANY other things on their a la carte list like amaebi, ikura, hokkigai and so on, so in the end we really only had about 3 or 4 kinds of fish (read: the least expensive kinds) other than the max-2-maguro to choose from... not a good sign.
The worst part was the rice. lukewarm and mushy, and squished too hard that they were becoming pasty. Yuck. After the first round of orders we quickly agreed that this was no place to eat sushi (i.e. maki and nigiri, anything that uses rice), and decided to concentrate on sashimi and other items. But what CAN you eat in a sushi place if sushi was unnacceptable? Well, we tried. But the other dishes weren't great either.
Oh there was one funny thing that night also... I ordered ika (squid) sashimi and they served me ebi (shrimp). Plain old boiled shrimp. I told the waitress that I ordered ika, and she replied, "This is our ika." I can see that maybe one can mistake squid for cuttlefish or vice versa, but not shrimp for squid!
I said "But this is shrimp, not squid." and she said, "Do you want it back?" at which point my friend said, "Okay, we'll take the shrimp. That's fine. So you don't have squid tonight?" and she insisted, "This is the ika that we serve.
So my overall impression on Sushi Island: A restaurant with the name Sushi that serves inedible sushi, period.
If you want delicious AYCE sushi try Sushi D down the street. Tried it for the first time this week and the experience was definitly worth noting.