Yuzu? I do!

$75 (Spring) omakase dinner at Yuzu (not including tax, sake, and tip)

Courses:

1. Monkfish pâté in a yuzu ponzu (vinaigrette) sauce. A delicious start. I don't know if it was the monkfish or the preparation but the dish tasted very similar to pâté, soft, meaty with the earthy flavour of liver.
2. 3 amuse-bouches: bamboo shoot on a bed of seaweed, tempura king crab claw, and pig marrow jelly. The bamboo was fresh and refreshing; the crab claw was like a very high-end version of what you'd find in a chinese restaurant (in other words, tasty fried seafood!); and the pig marrow was turned into a gelatinous cube stuffed with shiitake mushroom. A very interesting texture with just a hint of animal fat.
3. Clear soup with snapper wrapped in sakura leaf, with sakura flowers, mushrooms, and asparagus. A gentle broth, not too salty, perfect for spring. Soft but chewy snapper. The sakura leaf didn't taste like much but the flower had a strong, salted/briny flavour (very interesting).
4. A small sashimi plate with Greek snapper and o toro (blue fin tuna belly) with shiso. The tuna was rich and buttery. The Greek snapper had a strong, smoky taste; something I've never tasted with raw fish.
   
5. Grilled black cod (in a miso marinade) with an assortment of mushrooms, asparagus, and herbs on a hoba leaf. Perfectly cooked fish, no more need be said.
6. Grilled snapper neck with briny burdock. The dish that gave me the most pause as the fins were still attached and sticking straight up from the plate. Luckily that was just for presentation, there is a lot of tasty flesh attached to that neck.
7. A selection of sushi: tempura unagi, white fish (forgot the type) ocean trout, scallop, japanese snapper. Fresh and delicious.
8. Green tea ice cream surrounded by flowers with leaves made from fried gyoza flour, freshly made mochi balls rolled in dried bean paste. A very satisfying end to the meal.

Previously, at $60, the omakase at Yuzu was a steal. Now, at $75, plus a cheap $18 bottle of clean, chilled sake, the bill is starting to add up. However, the dishes are imaginative with excellent ingredients and the service is always impeccable. So do as I do, put away that $20-25 everytime you feel the urge to go to that cheap all-you-can-eat sushi joint. In no time at all, you will have enough to get the good stuff.

I was also given a sampler of sparkling sake. What an interesting experience: like champagne, but not! (I'm so eloquent). I wouldn't drink sparkling sake for an entire meal, but a small glass before or after dinner, that would certainly hit the spot.

Chef has started the same tradition that exists at Japango, his other place. Regulars get their own chopsticks, stored in wooden boxes placed behind the sushi bar. I wonder how many omakase dinners I have to eat to get my own?

Yuzu? I zu!

$60 omakase dinner at Yuzu (236 Adelaide St W, Toronto) not including tax + tip.

Courses:

1. 4 piece amuse-bouche in wooden boxes: oyster + raw quail egg shooter, deconstructed crab claw, haddock fried in yuzu sauce, eel stuffed with burdock.
2. Soup with shrimp dumplings (contains chopped shiso), shiitaki mushroom, asparagus, and lotus root.
3. Presentation of aji (horse mackerel) on a bed of fried leeks, herb, with a tiny deep-fried crab perched on a bamboo leaf, surrounded by ice pellets and pebbles.
4. A selection of tempura: eggplant, unagi eel, and shiso leaf.
5. Sauteed black cod marinated in a mizo sauce.
6. A tiny hot pot of shrimp, enoki mushroom, chinese cabbage and green onions.
7. A selection of 4 slightly seared nigiri: shrimp with raw quail egg, + 3 others (most distintive was the octopus flesh which was carved as a tiny octopus with little tentacles).
8. Vanilla ice cream with home-made strawberry jam and gelatinous cubes of seaweed.