#SushiSaturday We finally got to try The Dragonfly Sushi Bar

Between having to work afternoon shift and things like getting the kids out to Camp Cedarwin I haven't been free Friday nights. This means I haven't had a chance to do a #FoodPornFriday post for some time. I feel bad about this. So today I present a special #SushiSaturday post featuring some of the most appealing sushi ever.

The Dragonfly Sushi Bar opened up in Windsor quite a while ago. It's a small place located at 1567 Ottawa Street and is very easy to miss if you don't know it's there.

I remember a lot of buzz when it opened. I kept hearing that this was the place to go. That the chef (Shane Cushing) was the best in the city and one of the best sushi chefs in Canada. It seems everyone else heard this too as my wife and I were never able to get in. It doesn't help that they have very limited hours and are very small. Now I realize all I had to do was call ahead and get reservations, but that would require more pre-planning that we usually have when deciding to eat out.

Back on May 25th my wife and I found ourselves kid free and looking for somewhere to eat. I wanted to try somewhere new and headed towards India Paradise, a new Indian place on Ottawa street. On the drive there we passed Dragonfly and I noted that they were open. When we got to India Paradise it looked like they were closed (more about that if I ever post about India Paradise) so we headed back to Dragonfly and actually managed to get in and get a seat.

I'm so glad we got in that day. Dragonfly serves the freshest fish I've ever eaten. The tuna was like butter. It melted in your mouth. I'm not a fan of sashimi (the actual raw fish that many people think all sushi is), but my wife is. She insisted I try her tuna and OMG it was so good. Everything was excellent. We ordered a mix of rolls both ones from the menu and daily specials. I also got a Panko Pork Slider that was also a daily special. That Pork Slider is one of the most delicious things I've ever put in my mouth.

Everything we had was excellent. Ridiculously fresh and well made. I'm not sure how to get across just how special this was. Let's put it this way, I didn't think food could taste this fresh. I've eaten a lot of food. I had a definition of amazing fresh food in my head based on that experience and Dragonfly caused me to raise that bar, to redefine my idea of fresh sushi.

With all that said, this has got to be my favourite sushi place in the city now, right? Surprisingly no. It's up there, way up there, but there were some things that I wasn't a big fan of. The sashimi is amazing, but it's still not the kind of thing I want for a meal. Added to that almost every single roll had shrimp in it, most of it cooked shrimp. I'm not really a shrimp fan and when I do eat it I like it chilled. Now I could tell that it was amazing and perfectly prepared but it wasn't a taste for me. Like when I have a great IPA, I can tell it's a good IPA but I'm still not a fan of IPAs.

Now I'm certain that this is the perfect taste for someone, probably lots of people. You honestly can't get better ingredients or better-prepared sushi anywhere in the city. If you dig shrimp and lots of sesame and crispily fried root vegetables and edge seared eel you are going to love Dragonfly. If you like sushi at all you owe it to yourself to try Dragonfly at least once. For us it's going to be a now and then sushi place. I'm certain sometime in the future my wife or I will get a sushi craving and say: let's go back to The Dragonfly Sushi Bar and when we do I don't expect to be at all disapointed. I just hope they have panko pork sliders as a special that day. 

#FoodPornFriday featuring Cheeseburgushi

Today's #FoodPornFriday post comes from Universal Studios in Orlando Florida. Specifically from an amazing restaurant called The Cowfish that is part of the Universal Citywalk.

As you may expect from the name, The Cowfish specializes in burgers and sushi. But they also have something else: Burgushi. That is what you see here. Specifically Cheeseburgushi.

I will fully admit I was leery when my mother in law ordered this. I did have to admit it looked pretty damn good when it showed up though. Come on look at that picture, you can't tell me that doesn't look appetizing. So how was it?

This was by far one of the best things I've eaten in my entire life. It was so damn good!

After finishing just one piece of this burgushi I looked at the three other specialty rolls on our table and wished they were the other varieties of burgushi. That's knowing that Cowfish has really damn good sushi, but it's nothing compared to this monstrosity they have created. An amazingly tasty monstrosity.

My only regret is that we had meal plans for the rest of our trip and getting back to The Cowfish was not part of the plan. If we ever make it back down to Orlando I will definitely make sure that a trip to Cowfish is on the itinerary and when we get there I'm ordering one of each of all the different types of burgushi.

#FoodPornFriday featuring Yami Sushi

Today's #FoodPornFriday is also a #FishFriday post, sorta. #FishFriday is not my thing at all. In general I can't stand fish. You can convince me to eat a tuna sandwich now and then but that's about it. For some reason though I love sushi. I don't get it. There's quite a bit in most sushi I don't like and it's not just the fish. I don't like cucumber, avocado or crab. But for some reason when you put that all together with some sticky rice I'm in heaven.

This fantastic looking Sushi boat comes from Yami Sushi located at 1459 Ottawa St. We've only gone the one time and the food was decent. All of their sushi is ala carte, no all you can eat for $20, which personally I think is a good thing. In addition to sushi you can also get a variety of Korean dishes. 

I'm totally craving sushi

Like many people in Windsor right now I'm laid off. The FCA Windsor Assembly plant is down for re-tooling and due to that many people are out of work right now. It's not just people that work at the plant, it's all the people working at the feeder plants as well (that's the boat I'm in).

Due to this lay off we've had to cut back on the eating out and 'premium' food. This means lots of lunch meat, peanut butter, wraps and KD. All of this has hit me hard today with a huge sushi craving.

I could totally go for some Hikari Japanese Restaurant. This is a higher end Sushi place downtown on Victoria that's in a restored manor. 

They recently just updated their menu and seem to have tried to go for even more high end food. There's a bunch of interesting looking tapas dishes, some flat breads and quite a few non-sushi items.

Hikari isn't cheap but the food is very good. The atmosphere is excellent and I find it's a great 'date place.' It's the sushi restaurant of choice for us to celebrate special occasions.

Or maybe I want some The Sushi California, just down the street, still downtown, on University.

I wrote up a review of this great place for Eyes On Windsor a couple years back. I loved it then and still really enjoy it now. 

I love the decor and atmosphere at The Sushi California. It just looks cool and authentic there. Much more casual than Hikari. 

The rolls there are huge, I don't think you can find larger rolls in the city. It's the one place we have to remember to order less food every time we go.

Heck I don't even need to eat in. I would be perfectly happy with take out from Niko Sushi. 

Not that there's anything wrong with eating in at Niko but we've found that they do the best take out Sushi in the city. I personally like to drive out to Tecumseh though the food is just as good from the Devonshire Mall. There are more options in Tecumseh.

I can't get enough of the Niko sauce and they have some of my favourite rolls ever. The Rainbow Roll being one both my wife and I love. The kids actually love Niko the best as well as they make great Avocado and Imitation Crab rolls that are not only good but cheap.

That's not to mention Sushi Guru in Walkerville or Tiki Sushi on Erie Street and a half dozen more that I haven't even tried yet. There's also all the All You Can Eat places around the city. Tenko, Tenka, Hoi, Koi. Oh man, there so many great places to get sushi in Windsor!

Okay, maybe writing a blog post about craving sushi when I'm craving sushi wasn't the best idea. Now I'm REALLY CRAVING SUSHI!

Of course I had to share fish for today's #FoodPornFriday

Seeing as it's Good Friday I figured I had to share some fish for today's #FoodPornFriday. The problem with this is that I don't generally like fish. I'll have the occasional tuna sandwich but I don't like cod, haddock or perch. I don't even like it beer battered and deep fried. 

At first I was thinking I was going to have to share one of my wife's pictures. She's a huge fish fan and I'm pretty sure I've got a picture of the Perch lunch from The Twisted Apron. It was while I was looking for that picture that I noticed all the pictures of all of the awesome Sushi we've gotten around town. Hey! Sushi has lots of fish!

I don't really get it myself. How I can loath most fish and fish meals but love Sushi. I don't like most of the other stuff that goes in sushi either. Cucumber, blech. Avocado, no way. Salmon Roe, fish eggs, come on!?! But put all together with some rice and I love it.

This particularly awesome fishy platter full of fishy sushi comes from The Sushi California.

Did you make or get some Fish today? Why not join in the #FoodPornFriday fun and share it with us! Link up below.

If you have a website keep it current!

Restaurateurs if you have a website keep it up to date!

Note that third word there, after Take Out.

The plan tonight was to make some Pizza Bombs (that seems to be what the web decided those pizza roll things I posted about a couple weeks ago should be called). My wife has a terrible ear infection and really isn't up to cooking, so this was my way of helping out. Unfortunately the cheese had gone bad.

I'm fighting a cold and didn't really feel like heading out to get ingredients (plus Galati cheese closes at 5 and it was 4:40 when I made this discovery. There's no way I'm making Pizza Bombs without Galati Mozarella), so we decided on ordering in.

I'm so sick of Chinese and pizza and the usual delivery. So I was looking for something different. I eventually remembered this all you can eat sushi place that's not too far away that does delivery, Tenka Sushi.

So my wife and I spent far too long trying to decide what to order. We get the kids involved and let them pick out rolls (yes my little girls eat sushi, actually they love it). All told all of this has taken about an hour. Between figuring out that the cheese is bad, brainstorming on where to get food from, setting on a place and then figuring out what we want. 

I call the number on Tenka's website. I let it ring 15 times. I wonder if I got the number wrong and I try again. This time after about 8 rings I'm talking to my wife saying "I wonder if they've closed?" when someone answers a few rings later. I tell the woman on the phone that I would like to place an order for delivery and she says "No!" I said "what?" and she said "No delivery, we never deliver" 

"Really? You should update your website then..." and I'm cut off.

"No delivery, we no deliver"

"Well thanks then, seriously though: update that website, bye"

This place has been around for several years now, so I'm pretty sure the Grand Opening menu on the "http://doestakeout.com/" wiki page that they have linked to host their menu should have been a good sign that things weren't going well, but I called anyway.

So now I've basically wasted an hour and still have nothing even ordered for dinner. 

Seriously people: if you have a website keep it up to date. I personally will never deal with Tenka again after this. 

I'm undecided on Koi Sushi

Koi LaSalle

Koi Kingsville

My wife and I really dig Sushi, which is odd to me as I generally don't like any fish besides tuna. That's besides the point though. Pretty much every time I post or talk about eating Sushi someone mentions that we should try Koi Sushi. We finally got around to doing just that, twice, and I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it.

Koi Sushi has two locations locally, neither of which are actually in Windsor. Their first and main location is in Kingsville and their secondary location is out in LaSalle. We tried the LaSalle location first and got to experience one of my biggest restaurant pet peeves: closing early. We showed up at 9:10pm for dinner one night and were turned away due to them being closed. Double checking the hours on the door it said they closed at 10:00pm. Now I sorta get closing up 15 minutes early or even closing down the kitchen half an hour before close and, in these cases, I think you should just set your posted hours to show what time you stop serving so you don't piss people like me off. But closing 50 minutes early, that's too much! It was months before we even considered going back but we eventually did.

Negimaki appetizer

We went nice and early the second try. The place looked great, good atmosphere, clean, lots of room. One of the things we noticed was lots of kids. That's a good sign. Our waitress was very attentive and full of information. We pointed out it was our first time and asked for some recommendations. They strongly suggested the $20 all you can eat dinner. This I found odd, as nothing on their website said this was an all you can eat Sushi place. Since the selection on the all you can eat menu was way smaller than the regular menu we decided on a la Carte. The food came quick enough and looked rather good. We got the following rolls: Firecracker, Koi, Beef Crunch and Crispy Crunch. I apologize for the sub par pictures but all I had on me was my iPod touch.

Normally I really love tempura on and in my sushi. I love the crunchiness. What was really unique here is that instead of tempura they had potato crisps. This was a really odd unique taste. We also got a beef Negimake appetizer which while good wasn't nearly as good as the Beef roll we got. 

Our four rolls at Koi LaSalle

Overall the sushi was good. It wasn't the best we have had but it was no where near the worst. It was pretty far on the fusion style with lots of hot rolls, deep fried items and western toppings like the potatoe. I would say for traditional Sushi it was below my expected average but if I was getting all you can eat it would have beat my expectations. As a nice final touch they gave us a coupon for 20% off for trying the place and to encourage us to come back. 

There was one final piss off though. No debit. This one ranks up there with closing early for me. It's 2013 people, get a debit machine. No the ATM at the front will not do, especially since you are going to make an extra buck or two off me for using it. Yes that's right no Debit but an ATM with a $1.75 stupidity fee. That is just not acceptable to me and left both my wife and I with a rather bad taste for Koi right when we are leaving. Not the final experience you want to leave your guests with.

So a few weeks went by and we plan a weekend date night. We decide to head out to Kingsville for this but decide we don't want to hit Jack's Gastropub for dinner, though we do want to head there after for a few craft beers. Now when we heard that Koi was great it was always in reference to the Kingsville location and not the LaSalle one. So we figured we would give it a shot. We should have just ate at Jack's.

Three of the rolls at Koi Kingsville

The Kingsville Koi was very similar to the LaSalle one in many ways but did have some differences. The place looked very modern and there was very loud techno/dance music playing. The menu was somewhat different. They also offered $20 all you can eat sushi, which my wife and I debated getting for a long time. Eventually though we decided to go a la carte again as there were some rolls that sounded really good that weren't on the other menu. The chairs were hard and uncomfortable and it took over half an hour for them to take our order, we listened to loud annoying Techno while waiting. 

For this trip to Koi we decided to try the following rolls: Slater, Samurai, Rainbow and Volcano, Vampire and Dragon rolls. No appetizer this time around as the rolls were the best part about our LaSalle trip. We also ordered Green Tea and were surprised when we were served hot water and two cups with tea bags in them. Come on, I'm at a sushi place and you don't brew the tea for me? There was one thing that made me really happy, the potato thing seemed to be a LaSalle thing, there was lots on the menu with actual tempura. 

The food took forever but looked great. Thankfully I even remembered my camera this time around. Again the food tasted rather good. The Samurai roll in particular was great. The Volcano roll was one of the most unique rolls I've ever seen and tasted good. Their Rainbow roll was the best of the bunch. I wasn't that big a fan of the Slater roll as I found it fishy but my Wife loved it. Man those chairs sucked though and now the techno has lyrics. Did you notice something? How many rolls I just described? How does that compare to the number we actually ordered? Right, they forgot a roll. 

The very cool looking Volcano Roll

So after waiting far too long for someone to check in to see how our meal was, we pointed out our missing Vampire Roll. A waitress apologized and said she would get right on it. Not our waitress mind you, as far as I can tell she went home or something as I never saw her again. 10 minute later we asked again, and were told it would be just a moment. My wife who was facing the sushi bar saw our roll get made and then get delivered to a table that was eating all you can eat. The manager was out on the floor asking people how their meals were (actually rather good to see), when he came to our table we noted that we had now been waiting 25 minutes for a roll they forgot to serve us. He said he would fix it right away, 10 minutes or so later we finally had our Vampire roll. OMG garlic. It was good but not so good eating three pieces in a row. Would have been better if we were eating it mixed with everything else, if it had come with the rest of our meal.

So we finished up and had to ask for our bill. I hate having to ask for a bill. It came, and then my wife and I had a flashback to LaSalle. Sure enough there was an ATM by the door. Seriously people, don't do this! 

The Vampire roll we waited for

Back to the bill; I'm one of those people who just takes a bill, reads the total on the bottom does some quick math to figure out a tip and then pays. Thankfully my wife is one of those people who actually read the things before paying. I say thankfully because this is when we realize we didn't get our Dragon roll either. Wow, seriously, two rolls missed? There is no way in hell we are wasting another half hour or more here waiting for one more roll. We note this to the manager, he fixes the bill and apologizes. On a good move: he gives offers us free desert. We turn this down, at this point all we wanted was to get out of here and head over to Jack's for those beers. The manger was cool enough to toss us a 25% off coupon to encourage us to go back. 

So yeah, overall we did not have the best experience at Koi Sushi. The experience in LaSalle was fine and the food was good but not great. The experience in Kingsville was pretty horrible but the sushi was actually significantly better than LaSalle. I really have mixed feelings about the chain. For a special night out to have sushi I think I will pass and instead hit up somewhere like The Sushi California (that I just featured in my latest #FoodPornFriday post). I may consider going to either location for all you can eat sometime, since we do have two coupons we could use. I do worry that they won't get our order right though.