Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Ten Sushi buffet Bank St.First Impressions and copy of menu.

Ten Sushi is a buffet that just opened  two weeks ago and has a all you can eat concept.
There is also a regular menu and delivery available when you spend $25.00.
My visit was at lunch and the cost for one person then is $13.95 and very reasonable.
The location where the restaurant is situated used to be a Blockbuster video store and recently a furniture outlet.
To see how the space has been renovated into a very spacious restaurant is quite impressive!
One novelty of Ten Sushi is that you order at your table using an iPad tablet.
While that is a neat idea it can be a bit slow and cumbersome to pick your dishes as we were told it was one iPad per table. Once we figured out how to scroll through the many menus out food came extremely quickly.
You do need to remember to press SEND or your order will never get to the right place.

My first impression was that I hoped it was decent, but it is just $13.95 for lunch- so not the end of the world. I was a bit hesitant to go for dinnertime when the cost per person goes up to $23.95 for adults.
When I walked in I noticed the spacious location there was a large touch screen displaying the menu items.
We had asked to be seated at a booth- and when I got to the booth I was not too impressed. There was a long black hair right on one of the dinner plates and the bench had some crumbs on it.
I asked to have the plates changed. If there is one way to reduce someone's appetite this would be it!
Now the iPad is a neat idea, but from what I read on some online reviews, the screens had some food residue on them and people really did not enjoy that.

Now onto the food- the dishes we ordered came five minutes after we ordered them and were very fresh.
I kind of wonder how they can produce dishes so quickly.
My choice of dishes was not very adventurous as I wanted to try some dishes I was already familiar with.

The following are the dishes I tried:

sweet potato avocado hand roll :was good, but had mayo in it). The sweet potato was tempura style and I did not know this when I ordered. I'm not a fan of anything with mayo and the menu has no descriptions. I will know for next time I guess...

tofu pocket: (there are known as Inari at other restaurants)- those were quite small and seems the tofu was cut in half to make the pockets more bite size.

 tempura shrimp rolls were good, but there was no avocado like at other places and no salmon roe either. The tempura shrimp rolls: consisted of the shrimp, seaweed and rice. They were still quite tasty but I could have easily eaten a dozen of those as the pieces were fairly small.

 avocado sushi:  was very fresh too- but just the regular smaller rolls that only had avocado. Kind of hard to mess those up.

sesame balls- they were very fresh and had some bean paste in the middle.

 Deep Fried Milk: One item that really intrigued me was the Deep Fried Milk. I had never heard of this item before and asked the server what it was and was told it is milk that is deep fried and it is good.
(Doesn't really tell me much). My friend thought it would be somewhat like the deep fried ice cream many "mexican" restaurants serve. Turns out the fried milk is a tempura-like batter and inside is a kind of custard or rice pudding . I would get this item again. The order has 2 pieces and those were 1" x2".

fried bananas: were also ordered and they did look quite good- but the issue my guest had was that there was chocolate drizzled on them and she does not like chocolate sauce.
Actually the issue my friend had is the menu makes absolutely no mention that there is chocolate sauce on the bananas and was not too pleased as they never eat those kind of things.

Here is a copy of the all you can eat selections I was given when I dropped by Ten Sushi earlier this week:

TEN SUSHI AYCE MENU

My review will be finished later on today....
Ten Sushi is located at: 1490 Bank St., Ottawa, ON, K1H 7Z2

*Overall my visit was decent and I will try eating here again, but am also going to check out what other similar restaurants are out there!





Monday, April 7, 2014

Todric's weekend special dish COQUILLE ST. JAQUES!

TTFinally, I have managed to go to a nice restaurant and remember to bring my camera!
This Saturday I went to Todric's restaurant in Ottawa and one of the special dishes this weekend was Coquille St. Jaques!
I have never eaten this dish in a restaurant before and when I read on Todric's Facebook page this was a special I had to go there right away!

The dish was very large and well presented and the best Coquille I have ever eaten.
Usually I get other seafood dishes at another place and have Bouillabaise (a seafood soup/stew).
TODRIC'S COQUILLE ST. JAQUES