The Tuesday Taste: Kibo Sushi House

 

 

Find me and follow me

through corridors, refectories

and files you must follow me

leave this psychedelic factory

You'll find me in the matinee

The dark of the matinee

 

At last... another Tuesday, another Taste! Last weekend ended up being strange, unpredictable and busy and so there wasn't time to properly go try something for the sake of a review. This week though we're back at it, jumping into a food squarely and firmly in my unique and particular wheelhouse....

Sushi. Sushi??? Goddamnit who makes these decisions? Oh, right.

Believe it or not, I've actually reviewed sushi before. Last summer for my ongoing East End Eats series I checked out Yumei Sushi House here in the Beaches, where I also again admitted how unknowledgeable I am about this particular dish.

To be fair to myself, I will say that I can definitely tell good sushi from bad sushi. My first experience trying it was back in my Drake Hotel days, where they had (and still do I believe) a genuine sushi bar with trained chefs behind it. A good initial exposure I'd say, and most definitely on the upper end of my (very limited) sushi quality spectrum. On the bottom of that? The prepackaged Bento (I think) stuff you find on shelves at Shoppers Drug Mart. The rice tastes chemically sticky, the insides bland and unappealing, everything is horribly chewy... dreadful stuff. I made the mistake (twice!) and never again. 

With that scale in mind (and Yumei would be on the upper end of it, for the record), lets approach our featured restaurant this week: Kibo Sushi House. I'd never even heard of them until this past summer (I'm an expert don't ya know) but they have nearly 30 locations throughout the GTA, including one on Kingston Road right near my doorstep. Their website doesn't tell you anything about their origins beyond "Kibo" being a translation of hope and how 'hope' can endure you through all of life's problems. Sure, I guess. 

A slightly better history can be found in this BlogTo article, which despite the predictably brain-dead headline calling Kibo the 'McDonalds of sushi' or something (good lord...) at least provides some backstory to the company. Assuming the article is correct (a leap of an assumption undoubtedly) it appears Kibo opened their first location in 2013 in Cabbagetown here in Toronto, quickly expanding to multiple outposts within a couple years and then popping out like rabbits during the past five. Sounds like a story of a small business done good and reaching the quick pinnacle of success, right? Well... actually yeah it does seem that way. Seriously, it is extremely hard to find any inside information about this chain beyond an occasional bad online review (you know the kind I'm sure).

All right lets actually get into this. Unsurprisingly I checked out the location two blocks north of my house, which I had attempted to try before! That evening though their internet was down and were cash-only, so that week ended up being my Papa John's/angry-at-asshole-drivers article instead. Fun. At least, having been there before, I knew this location of Kibo had an intriguing daily special: 8 pieces of spicy salmon roll and 8 pieces of spicy tuna roll, plus salad and soup, all coming in under sixteen bucks with tax.

I'll start with the soup, which I considered a "happens to be here also" type of bonus. I'm not really a soup guy: I never make them at home for myself, although I do enjoy a nice cheddar broccoli or a well done tomato soup on a cold day. This was a Miso soup, something I've heard of endlessly my entire adult life but had never tried until now. Honestly, it's hard to critique it without a frame of reference, but this wasn't for me. It (or at least this version) is a very brothy, thin kind of soup... with a bit of a bitter leafy taste and quite salty body. Probably too salty. I had a few tastes and gave up.

The salad: now we're on a better track. It's a basic house salad sure, but I like how it understands "basic" doesn't have to mean "bland" if you have fresh ingredients and enough texture and theme tying it together. You get your lettuce, shaved carrots, red cabbage, so plenty of crunch, but it's really the dressing that makes it work. It's rather like a sweet mango/pineapple taste (they have a mango salad on the menu) that thankfully isn't syrupy sweet or sticky, instead more of a very (very) fine puree blended into a dressing. I really liked this, which may shock many of you but yes it's true: I actually do eat (and enjoy!) salads. 

 

Onto the main event! Since there are two different types here, I'll tackle them on their own merits separately and then discuss the overall quality after. The tuna rolls: well damn I gotta say this one ambushed me. Lots of immediate flavour, that gamey texture of the tuna somewhat there but the taste of it (unlike say a Subway tuna sub) stands alone and rightfully so. Not overly salty or fishy, rather more like a tasty baked fish cake that obviously hasn't been baked. It still has that slightly tough mouth feel of tuna (why do you think so many tuna subs are drenched in mayo) but here in raw form all that is far reduced while the pure flavour shines through. Once I got used to it on the final pieces of the roll it was merely very good, but damn those first few completely blew me away. Seriously impressed. 

The salmon rolls were likewise extremely good, although not as initially dynamic as the tuna was. Salmon sushi is by far the type I've eaten the most, in both good and bad qualities, and so here was something harder to knock me off my feet. Hey, non-feet-knocking aside, this was still quite tasty. With cooked salmon you get this flaky, salty and tender taste that when done well is truly marvelous. When raw, obviously it won't be flaky (at least you hope so) but there's an inherent water saltiness to it that makes it (and a lot of seafood, honestly) unmistakable. The advantage of it raw is how the flakiness transforms into sheer delicateness: a good salmon sushi roll should slowly dissolve in your mouth as you go. The texture of it is key, and I'll say that Kibo got this right here. There's a tricky balance with raw food where it can't be too dry but also not too slimy, and again while I'm no expert I very much enjoyed this as well and think they very much understand that balance. 

 

Lets talk about the overall quality before we depart. Comparing an actual restaurant dish (especially one that really really should be prepared to order) to pre-packaged trash isn't totally fair, but whatever it's my show wuahaha. What I like about the very best sushi I've had, and (spoiler) Kibo would be in that tier, is how imprecise the rounds of rice and seaweed are, the imprecision of something made by human hands. The pre-packaged stuff is made in nearly perfect circles or squares, appealing to the eye but unappealing to the tongue once it's too late. 

The rice tastes very natural here, not too sticky and not too loose either. These crumbly things in various colours you see in the picture add a nice bit of light crunchy texture to counteract the softness of the fish and the rice, like a tempura batter dried out and broken up? (I seriously don't know what they are, help me!). Also I have to mention the spicy drizzle, the exact kind of hot sauce I enjoy. While it tastes nothing like it, the progression is like tasting a honey mustard and then going immediately for a hot dijon: just substitute a more creamy sauce with an eventual sweet chili pepper kick. 

Look, if this is the "McDonalds" of sushi... maybe I should rethink how I think about McDonalds! Ummmm... no and definitely no. From a true novice of the cuisine, Kibo is legitimately tasty. If you can find one with a likewise good daily special, this is a thumbs up recommendation. I'm not gonna do that hokey YouTube review thing and say "Wow! Everyone needs to go here right away and I'll be heading back there again reeeal soon! Smash that "Like" button and subscribe!"... nah, it's just quite nice to know something of this level (and affordability and quantity) is so close by. Most importantly, it was one of the very few times I've eaten a large amount of sushi and not still been hungry. Well done.  

 

Burnt Ends -- I really haven't done any writing at all so far in December, despite my grand promises of Many Things On The Horizon(TM). There are still such grand things though... watch for my Led Zeppelin album ranking soon, plus my dear dad was kind enough to provide some DVD copies of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, meaning I can review the Star Wars films! Yesss... rise, Lord Collier Street... the time has come...

 

Tuesday Tune -- It's damn weird to call songs and albums that came out when I was in freaking high school classics or nostalgia, but it's also true this album came out in 2003... like nearly 20 years ago. They warned me getting older wouldn't be fun, they warned me! Ah whatever, as long as I can still ride a bike and play baseball. In the meantime, this song kicks ass and reminds me of Grade 11. 

 

 

That's all this week! Thanks for sticking around, stay tuned to the show because despite my silence the past week there are a lot of fun things upcoming. Be on the lookout for those, while in the meantime stay safe, stay healthy and don't spill that mustard.