Asa Sushi

Today my SO was craving sushi and we happen to live in an area of toronto (etobicoke) where there is very little sushi restaurants that seem good. We looked at many places on Urban Spoon and decided to go with Asa Sushi. The review was at 80% and $. The menu looked affordable so we decided to take a gander.

This was located on Jane and Bloor and there was no available parking lot so we had to park on the street.

The first impression when we sat down is that this is a mom and pop family run restaurant. The family looked korean and can confirm that they were as we saw a couple of korean dishes on the menu. The service is slow, the menu looked bland but they had a wide variety of sushi rolls. As a japanese person I am not a big fan of cream cheese sushi rolls so I stayed away from them.

I noticed that they were selling soft shell crab for 7$ (which is VERY affordable) so I had to order one. We also ordered 5 rolls to split between the two of us. Tekka maki, spicy tuna roll, caterpillar roll, big boy roll, and pink flower roll.

We first got the soft shell crab appetizer. The presentation was sub par, and the crab was covered in batter so we could not even see the shape of the crab. The crab looked much too big for a soft shell crab however was still easily eaten. There was the standard tempura sauce to dip in and tasted okay.

Then we got the sushi rolls, tekka, and spicy tuna are standard but the caterpillar consisted of unagi and cucumber rolled in rice and avocado on top; the big boy roll consisted of fried butter fish, imitation crab meat, and some other minor veggies; the flower roll was a vegetarian roll with deep fried yam, avocado, and cucumber wrapped in pink rice paper as a substitute for seaweed.

Again the presentation was sub par, looked like an amateur rolled these rolls, falling apart and not round. Flavour was okay, the most surprisingly good item was the caterpillar roll. The spicy tuna seemed like they used the sriracha chile sauce and therefore was quite spicy but not bad. The flower roll would be more enticing if it were not deep fried, to keep it in line with a healthy kind of vegetarian appeal. The big boy roll was interesting because I could not taste the butter fish, however I have never had butterfish fried before either so I was not sure what to expect. The soy sauce was in a yamasa container but tasted like kikkoman because of how salty it was.

My bill came to over 50$ including tip and we stayed there for about an hour and a bit.
I would recommend that as a korean run japanese restaurant, to add delicious korean dishes like soon tofu or bibimbop. Its always nice to have dishes of their culture.

Overall I would rate this a 68%, as the food wasn't spectacular and the service wasn't great.
I would not go back again, however if someone wanted me to go back to meet them there for dinner I would not say no.