Sushi Train on Yonge St.

I’ve been on a bit of a sushi craze lately. So after hearing friends mention there’s a good sushi restaurant on Younge somewhere south of bloor, I set out on a bit of a wild goose chase with a fellow partner in crime, walking up Younge not quite knowing what we were looking for. We ended up walking by Sushi Train, and since I’d never been to a conveyor belt sushi place before, we decided to give it a try. But it turns out that was just the first stop in our night of conveyor belt sushi.

BlogTO reviewed the place with a very comprehensive set of photos, so I’ll refer you to their review if you want more of a feel for the place. The basic deal is, you pick what you want from the conveyor belt, and the price corresponds to the colour of the plate you pick. As for my personal take on Sushi Train, I must confess I’m not a fan. My beef (or should that be fish) with Sushi Train is that it tries too hard to be upscale.

The sushi they serve is what you would call fusion: fancy looking, with all sorts of extra furnishings. The place itself is sleekly decorated, and the prices are not exactly cheap. I paid $15 (including tax + tip) for 3 plates. That’s 6 pieces of sushi. For the same price, I could have had a full meal at Sushi on Bloor or New Generation. Sure, my food wouldn’t be floating by on conveyor belts, but to be honest, the novelty of that wore out surprisingly quickly.

I guess I would still have been happy if they actually served top quality sushi, but they didn’t. Sad, cold tempura spins around the conveyor belt on a plate marked $5.50. The fish on the salmon nigiri looked like it’s been left out and feeling lonely. Actually, everything’s probably been sitting on the belt for a while, since we went on a Tuesday night and it wasn’t particularly busy. Oh, and I almost chocked on fish bones in the eel nigiri I ordered.

Having had enough of Sushi Train, we decided to try our luck elsewhere, so we headed to Toko, just down the street.

Toko on Yonge St, two blocks down the street from Sushi Train

Much to our surprise, Toko was also a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It looked like it just opened recently. I wouldn’t say it’s similar to Sushi Train, no. It was ALMOST IDENTICAL. Identical plates, identical tables, identical cups and cutlery, identical conveyor belts… they must have sourced from the same place. After recovering from the shock, we were glad to find the prices were a step lower here.

Toko was more of what I had in mind for a conveyor belt sushi place: decent, not spectacular, sushi at decent prices. Overall, the food was okay. There were fewer fusion elements than Sushi Train, but I actually preferred this. The only major mis-step was their Tuna Toro Nigiri. The cut of fish was terrible! It was full of adjoining tendons and impossible to chew. Worst dish of the night I must say.

Oh, I was somewhat charmed by the romantic touch fo putting a rose on a plate (see above picture). It would have been cute if I had come here on a date.

That said, I don’t think I’ll be going back to either of these restaurants. The novelty of the conveyor belt has worn off, and there are much better places to get your sushi fix (Ematei for example). However, if you feel like checking out a conveyor belt sushi place for the heck of it, I’d say skip Sushi Train and go to Toko.

Sushi Train
750 Yonge Street

Toko
Also on Yonge, 2 blocks south of Sushi Train

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 11:42 am and is filed under Food & Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.