Kiku sushi

Kiku sushi is a casual Japanese restaurant located along Kingsway and is tucked away in a plaza. If you didn’t know Kiku sushi was there, you wouldn’t even know it was there.

Kiku sushi interior

The interior of the restaurant is pretty big which makes it great for large groups. The lighting is a bit dim though so food photographers be weary!

Like most Japanese restaurants, Kiku has a lunch special menu where you can choose 3 items for $9.50.

I don’t usually have miso soup at restaurants but my tea was too hot and I was thirsty so I gave it a go. It wasn’t especially awesome or anything but there was lots of wakame seaweed!

So for my combo I decided to go for the alaska roll, vegetable roll and tai sushi. I honestly didn’t expect for there to be so much food since the rolls were gigantic! No wonder that each roll only had five pieces instead of the usual six or eight!

Sushi rolls

★★★

I actually liked the vegetable rolls the best out of everything because of the crunchy vegetables and creamy avocado on the inside. The alaska roll was pretty disappointing though because they put a bunch of imitation crab on the inside so it took up a huge portion of the fillings and there was barely any avocado or salmon in sight!

With that being said, I adore the sushi rice here. It was soft but not mushy and there was the perfect amount of rice vinegar seasoning in it too. I’m quite particular about my sushi rice and am always happy to go to a place that does it right!

No sushi visit for Grayson is complete without a helping of spicy tuna roll ($3.50) and dynamite roll ($4.95). He thought that the spicy tuna roll was pretty standard and noted that he thought the hot sauce on top looked “cute.” I thought that it seemed a little half heart-ed for them to simply put the hot sauce on top and call it a spicy tuna roll though. As for the dynamite roll, it was pretty decent as well.

Katsu don

★★★

Grayson decided to get the katsu don. He didn’t expect to get such a big portion of food either and he didn’t actually end up finishing his meal for once! It was filled with sweet soy mirin flavored glass noodles and big piece of katsu. It also had an egg on top which was a nice bonus!

Winter roll

★★★

Grayson also got one of Kiku’s specialty rolls, the winter roll ($5.50/6 pieces) which was a california roll with motoyaki topping on top. He said that everyone at his table enjoyed this new take on the california roll and the motoyaki topping added a toasty cheesy creamy aspect to it. I’m not sure why it’s called the “winter roll” but maybe it’s because it looks like a california roll wearing a hat.

Seafood salad

★★★

A mixed salad greens topped with assorted sashimi (tako, tuna, salmon, massago, ebi)

Nothing special to it really…a salad is a salad. But I guess the fish was decently fresh and actually had fish flavor (you know what I’m talking about…some Japanese restaurants have sashimi that’s virtually tasteless!)

More sushi!

House roll, house combo (1/2 salmon roll, 1/2 cucumber roll, california roll), spicy tuna roll and negitoro roll

We got pretty typical rolls so I don’t have much to say about them. Grayson said that the negitoro had really big slices of green onion in it though and I didn’t think that the spicy tuna was spicy at all. I was actually supposed to eat all the spicy tuna because Grayson doesn’t like spicy food. But then he somehow ended up unconsciously eating a majority of it anyways…that’s how not spicy it was.

We had a pleasant visit but as we were leaving I noticed something quite disturbing and that is that they had pre-made tempura and maki rolls in tubs behind the counter! Very not cool