superb dinner @ Kaiji Restaurant

My bf treated me to a traditional japanese dinner at Kaji restaurant for my birthday. It was definitely the BEST jap. dinner that I had so far. This restaurant is located in Etobicoke. Since the restaurant only has around 30 seats, reservation must be made. Once we got in, the server seated us near the bar table and handed us a warm towel to clean our hands. We chose the "waza" menu at $100 with 8 courses. There are no a la carte menu here, and you can only choose between the $80, $100,and $120 menus.


As I have shelled seafood allergy, they kindly amend the menu to exclude the shelled seafood.


My appetizer was Egg Tofu with mushroom, shredded green onions and grounded ginger on top in light soya sauce.  The tofu was really smooth and soft.



























 


Instead of the egg tofu, my bf had Calamari sauteed with butter. 

Next dish was Daikon raidish cake with egg yolk sauce.  It was delicious, warm inside and goes very well with the egg yolk.

Next up is a long place of sashimis. They were all super fresh and cut by the chef right infront of us.  My place has only fish.  There were trout, tuna, o toro, one small bowls of veggie salad and one bowl of tuna salad.  And all the sashimi were the best tasting sashimi i ate so far!!!.. Especially the o toro, it literally melts in your mouth once you take a bite. 

And the other sashimi plates with seafood has lobster, scallop and octopus sashimi.  My bf said they were equally delicious, especially the octopus' textrue and taste was exceptional!  

Here is how much I enjoyed my o toro sashimi.. haha. I even took a close up picture of it! Even looking at the picture makes me drool!!

Then comes the sauteed rock fish with burdock sauce.  The fish was sauteed to perfection with the burdock sauce!

Next is the mackerel wrapped together with onion, mushroom and eggs.  On the side are a piece of flaunder with onion and carrot shreds on top and a potato ball.  The mackerel was very juicy and slight sweet from the onions that was wrapped together.  

Sushi was served next, and since I cannot eat uni or lobster.  The chef decided to put down an empty place decorated with sweet ginger on my table, and made sushi in pairs and put them on my plate =)  The below two were blow torched mackeral sushi with their special sauce on top.  The toro was slightly crispy and warm and melts right in my mouth along with the delicious house sauce!!

Some other sushi were also paired with herbs to bring out the fish taste.   The salmon sushi below were also one of the best salmon sushi I ate so far. I never tasted any salmon sushi that is so melty and tasty! Not to mention, by midway of enjoying the sushi, I was already super full.  But of course, I would not stop here as all the food were super delicious!!!

Here comes the noodle in soup.  This tasted good, but plain in comparison to other dishes.  But it was a good dish ot clear the fish taste in the mouth to get ready for desserts!

Finally it's desserts time.  For two of us, they gave us one coffee jello with cream and anothe mousse with fruits.   Also, they changed our green tea to a stronger tasting oolong tea before they brought out the dessert to pair against the sweetness. 

Overall, it was definitely the BEST japanese food I had so far and it is well worth trying. 

Something that I found very impressive is that the Chef Kaji even make his own soya sauce to perfect the tasting that goes with his sushi and sashimi.  I was very happy and glad that my bf brought me here for my birthday.   Eventhough it is quite a pricey meal, but anyone who love Japanese food should definitely give this a try on a special occasion! 

=)

Wings night at Grace O'Malleys!!

I went for cheap wings after work today! they had a Monday deal of $2 per lb of wings with purchase of a beverage!  1 lb of wings is approximately 8 medium sized wings in a basket!! And they had choices of: BBQ, Buffalo medium, buffalo hot, honey garlic and Teriyaki.  I might have missed one or two choices, but this should be about it!  I arrived at around 6pm and the pub was around 1/3 full. 

 The atmosphere was nice with dim lightings and some background music. 

So I ordered the Buffalo BBQ wings to go with a beer (Canadian).   The wings were crispy and hot when the server brought them over!  I was originally worried that the Buffalo medium wings could be too spicy, but they end up to be perfectly spiced and manageable=)

Someone in our table ordered desserts after - Fiver layers chocolate cake with vanilla ice-cream.  I took a bit and the chocolate cake was very rich; almost like fudge.  And it is very delicious with the vanilla ice-cream.  But the size of the cake was HUGE, so it's probably a good idea to share the dessert!

 Definitely a good place to chill with friends and co-workers on a Monday night after work!  With the beer and 1 lb of wings with tax, the bill came to around 9 bucks.  By the time we left around 8:15pm, the pub was almost full.  

Dim Sum at Lai Toh Heen

Since my Groupon coupon for Lai Toh Heen is about to expire in less than a month, I decided to bring my parents to go try this place out along with my bf.  The restaurant is located at Eglinton/ Mount Pleasant Rd and we parked at a near by underground parking for $1 per each half an hour!  It is a relatively small chinese restaurant in comparison to lots of the ones in downtown toronto or Markham.  However, everything here is clean, neat and decorated elegantly.  The dim sum lunch here is only being served on Saturday and Sunday and usually reservations needed to be made!  We were seated at a round table with red plates and tea cups already set up.  We chose the Jasmine tea to go with our meal, which tasted very refreshing and flowery.   

We ordered some dim sum - deep-fried spring roll with vegetable and mushroom, pan-fried rice roll in chili conpoy soya sauce, chicken feet in Malaysian herb soup.  The spring rolls were crispy, fresh and blended really well with the assorted veggies inside.  And I had lots of chicken feet before, but never had it in a herb soup which is surprisingly tasty!  

Other dim sum we ordered were steamed pork and shrimp siu-mai topped with fish roe and the lotus leaf purse of glutinous rice with meat and seafood.  The presentation of the dishes was very nice and the glutinous rice was already unwrapped from the lotus leaf and put on the dish=) And due to my seafood allergy, I did not tried the siu mai. 

Next, we had the steamed short spareribs with black bean sauce.   It was soft and tender!

Another dim sum we ordered was the tofu layer with toasted garlic soya sauce.  I did not take a picture of it, but it was one of the new dim sum dishes that I never had before in other dim sum places.  I liked this dish very much, since the garlic soya sauce goes very well with the smooth & plain tofu layer.   Lastly we ordered a stir fried rice noodles with sliced beef in dark soya sauce.  When the server brought over the dish, he helped us splited the dish into separate bowls.  Excellent service.  The beef tasted good and the noodle came along with some green pepper, red pepper and onion.

The quality of the food was excellent and also great service.  The price of the dim sum are a little expensive in comparison to other chinese restaurants in uptown.  But it was definitely a  delicious dim sum lunch! 

Afternoon Tea @ Essence of Unionville

Finally gave it a try for the Afternoon tea @ Essence of Unionville ( Hilton Suites hotel at Markham). Even though I lived in Markham for more than 15 years, but I never went into this hotel before.  It is actually a very nice hotel with some wedding parties that are taking pictures in the lobby. 

Ok, so it cost $15 per person for afternoon tea buffet from 3pm to 5pm.  It was not that full when we got there, so we did not even have to make any reservation.   Once we were seated, the server immediately ask us what we would like to drink.  The choices were tea, coffee, iced tea or hot chocolate, and I went with coffee to go with the desserts.  

Below is the display of one section of the desserts: 

They had a decent selection of desserts, along with croissant, muffin and a variety of sandwiches.  First, I tried mango cake, tiramisu, scone with cream, pistachio cake and the fruit tart.  The cakes were nicely pre-cut into small pieces,  so that customers can tried a little bit of everything.   All the cakes were very fresh and a lot of their cakes were decorated with fresh rasberries on the top.  However, most of their desserts tasted alright.   The mango cake tasted like artificial mango flavoured and the tiramisu tasted a little bland, with a lack of flavours in coffee or liquor.  Out of these, I liked the fruit tart and the scone the best=)

I also tried this rasberry mousse cup with fresh rasberry and white chocolate.  I found it a little sweet.   I am so glad that I ordered coffee to go with all these desserts, as their coffee was rich and strong which goes really well with all these sweets!  As well, I tried some sandwiches with smoked salmon and cream cheese on wheat bread which is always a nice combination!   Overall, they had a good selection of desserts and the quality of the desserts varied.  But I think it is a great catch up place with friends, especially if you are a dessert person.  I have to say the desserts and pastries at Windsor Arms' afternoon tea was better though.