Tuesday 28 February 2012

Restaurant Review: Izakaya Ju

Izakaya Ju is a small restaurant/bar located in Toronto's J-town (not really a town, rather a small collection of Japanese themed restaurants, outlets and a supermarket but I am not here to judge...wait never mind). For those unfamiliar with Izakayas they are basically Japanese bars that serve food with their drinks.

Now the restaurant is small with a couple tables in a relatively square room. From the room you have a view of the bar and the kitchen behind it where you will find the all Japanese staff. On the wall to the left of the entrance is a giant chalk board; listing the grilled morsels offered and even what apparently are most popular at the moment. I went during lunch with my girlfriend so the place was not as bustling, if you really wanted to enjoy the environment I suggest going late night with a bunch of your friends so you can knock back some sake or Japanese beer with grilled meats... mmmmm meat on a stick.
Now that I have eluded that I am a sucker for meat on wooden skewers lets introduce the appetizers. We ordered three sets of skewers, chicken cartilage, chicken wings and my personal favourite chicken meatballs. I have been to Japan multiple times as a kid (lucky I know) and during one of my trips we went to a Japanese Yakitori restaurant. Yakitori is Japanese for chicken skewers and one of their staple dishes was chicken meat balls. Their meatballs would come in a plethora of different flavours and sauces and you could have a field day trying each of the different ones (which I did). You may be thinking, "how many goddamn ways can you put chicken on a stick?" But when you consider that the Japanese use almost every part of the chicken (innards,offal,skin and all!) you can find almost all of poultry anatomy on a flame grilled skewer (my mistake, coal grilled).

Back to the dish at hand.Pictured above are the wings and the meatballs, obviously I was too damn hungry to show you the cartilage, my apologies.
Overall the skewers were grilled well, the cartilage had a seasoning salt that really accented well the smoky grilled taste. The meatballs could have been more juicy but they still had good flavour, the sauce could have been more thick though. The chicken wings on the other hand were very succulent and had a nice char, could have used a tiny bit more seasoning but definitely good. Six for the cartilage and meatball and a six and half for the wings.

On to the main course!


Pictured above is what I ordered: Gyu-don accompanied with salad and miso soup. Gyu-don is beef and onions simmered in a sweet broth. Kind of resembling ginger pork. The beef and onion is then put over a bowl of rice hence the don part. First taste of the dish I noticed that it was sort tough. The beef was over cooked for my taste. My girlfriend referred to it as beef jerky (in a good way!) it had good flavour overall, soft sweet onions accompanying the beef, but did feel a bit one dimensional. I feel like the sauce was a bit watery and the rice was already very soft which made it a bit soggy. Overall I would give it a five it was decent but not that good.
Pictured above is grilled miso cod with rice and of course the complimentary soup and salad. Now my girlfriend ordered the fish because she loves fish, and I must say that she had the better dish that day. The cod was grilled nicely, crispy skin and succulent flaky meat. The miso glaze definitely lent itself well to the grilling process and the overall flavour of the dish. My one quarrel was that the dish was very oily, but cod is a fatty fish and its fine more omega-3. I give this a seven out of ten.

Overall Izakaya Ju was decent. The grilled foods were good so they definitely live up to their namesake. The gyu-don was a little disappointing but I blame that more on me ordering a non signature dish. I feel Izakaya would definitely give me a better showing at night with a bunch of drinks and just grilled meats instead of actual set lunches. Overall I would go again and would recommend to friends.

Score overview:
Chicken cartilage skewer - 6/10
Chicken meatball skewer - 6/10
Chicken wing skewer - 6.5/10
Gyu-don - 5/10
Miso glazed cod - 7/10

Recommended.

Izakaya Ju is located in J-town in Markham, Ontario. 3-3160 Steeles Ave. East L3R4G9
For more information on the restaurant check our their website here: Izakaya Ju

All photos taken by Christian Lin and Vivian Lam

First Post! Let the noms begin.

Before you read on, keep in mind that I have since abandoned a lot of the guidelines I created in this post. I was young, inexperienced and probably very hungry when I first started this blog so things have evolved a ton in terms of how I approach food and how I approach creating reviews. I keep this initial post here as a kind of memento of how I used to write and of how much I've grown. Writing for me has always been off the cuff, even more so when I was younger so its funny to go down memory lane and read some of my older posts. I only hope you can get a laugh from this stuff as well.

Yarharhar! This is the inaugural post to my food blog. The blog will be primarily made up of food reviews, personal recipes and general foodie adventures. It will let me document some of the delicious things I happen to come across during my life on earth. I only wish I started this sooner, as so many delicious delicacies have faded into memory.

But enough with the rambling, time for something worth reading. I mentioned restaurant reviews, but before I lay my subjective judgement onto poor unsuspecting restaurants I need to set some ground rules.

My reviews will be unstructured, I will not be using any set criteria other than prior experiences to judge the dishes I consume. As much as I want to be as consistent as possible for your sake (and mine) there will be times where I miss the mark. I may give overly favourable reviews because I just happen to be in a better mood on X day then on Y day. It happens, and should be taken into account when reading.

My review and subsequent rating will be primarily based on the food and the dish I ate. I may outline the decor, atmosphere and all around service at the restaurant in my review but that will in no way affect the mark. I am all about the food baby.

Finally I will explain the scale that I will use, this will be the only time I explain the scale because I feel like a singular in-depth explanation is better than me writing the scale over and over again in every post. From 1-10 the scale is as follows:

1 - Disgusting; never eat; avoid at all cost. Now I highly doubt I will ever give anyone or anything a one. For something to deserve this rating it would have to be basically inedible, which begs the question, why the hell am I trying it at all?
2 - Awful; who let this out of the kitchen? Not as bad as before, but not much better either. I would throw these dishes away after the first bite.
3 - Very bad; for lack of a better term. This is the land of the tasteless soup, of the burnt steaks, it was food once destined for greatness suddenly dropped into the depths of hell.
4 - Bad. The dish wasn't a complete train wreck but there were enough flaws that made it something I would like to not eat again.
5 - Mediocre. Now things start getting better, just making the cut, a passing grade, 50%, am I making my point?
6 - Decent. The dish in general is fine, it may have one or two problems but they are not enough to hold the dish down. It is here that dishes start to have good qualities to them as well.
7 - Good. The dish has been executed well, flaws are minor, and things are tasty enough here that I would definitely eat again.
8 - Excellent. The dish is very well done, it has multiple exemplary qualities to it or has little to no flaws.
9 - Amazing. You must eat this, the only thing that is setting this back from a ten is.. well look at the description for ten.
10 - Holy Shi- now here is the creme of the crop, tens are not only perfectly done but they will give you a new take on food that you will not be able to experience anywhere else. These dishes are either culinary master pieces or new takes on old classics.

I wanted to make this scale as realistic as possible, I wanted to avoid becoming the IGN of food (TENS EVERYWHERE), bear in mind the numbers may seem harsher than normal, but if you read the actual reviews you will realize that I will give 5-7s to places I actually enjoyed eating at.
So lets the culinary journey begin *bites pepper*

P.S. I still cannot believe the chairman ate a yellow pepper raw

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