Japango Omakase お任せ

It was a rainy day, both figuratively and literally. Tuesday evening, I just found out I’ve made a HUGE mistake somewhere. A mistake that I had no clue how and why it was there. Bad things happen – it reminds me of AC’s watch “Tough time never last”. I kinda feel the same way too. Haven’t been sleeping well lately. Lots of nightmares. One night I even dreamt of the UFOs. Crazy person. OKOK… I should stick to my topic now. Last night it was my bf’s convocation. Heavy raining, so lots of the graduates were late. Luckily, by the time I went downtown, rain has already stopped. After taking pictures and everything, we were thinking about the restaurant for the night. This question is always the tough one. The only thing I could think of (after working whole day yesterday) was that I came across the Japanese restaurant “Japango” on the chowhound forum just before I left my office. And I could still remember its location.

Therefore 5 of us drove to the Japango restaurant on Elizabeth street (+Dundas St. W.). At around 10:10pm, we were the only customers there (except there’s a young guy sitting there drinking sake). The restaurant was a pretty small but cozy one, with 1 waitress and 2 chefs. Looking at the menu… there was a wide variety of sashimi/sushi/nigiri/donburi and hot dishes that we could choose from. So, what we ordered was the omakase (chef’s choice – he was gonna pick whatever was fresh and good and give us the right portions given the other orders that we have placed.) 3 person portion’s sashimi and 5 person portion’s sushi, 2 katsu donburi, 1 tempura soba (instead of udon), 2 orders of kaki fry (deep fried oysters), 1 order of salmon belly.

Here’s our first dish! Look at that! Isn’t that amazing? Fresh oyster with uni, quail egg and the dark brown one I believe was the preserved duck egg white. Taste really good!

The second dish – Salmon Belly w. lemon juice – YUMM!

OH yeah! Here’s the deep fried oyster! Caution: It is REALLY HOT! I love it with the lemon juice. The sauce was very good too – a bit spicy!

Isn’t that beautiful?! 3 persons portion was just right. The chef introduced the different kinds of sashimi to us. But I was just too busy looking at it and taking pictures. Can’t recall which one is which now. But they are all very fresh and tasty!

Although we were actually expecting sushi/maki, here’s a dish of eye-catching nigiri!! Argh… I just love them, especially the white one and the king crab meat one :P~~~ At the corners are the rolls of smoked salmon. Lovely!

The overall experience was really good. Maybe part of it was the expectation. I didn’t expect I would get such high quality Japanese food there (although I saw the recommendation on the forum) and I wasn’t even “prepared” that I was going to have Japanese food last night. The total of this meal came to about CAD160 (including 3 pops and taxes; gratuity not included). I think I’ll come back another time.

FYI: Japango – Japanese fine food, Sushi & Noodle
122 Elizabeth Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 1P5
Tel: 416-599-5557
Hours: Monday thru Saturday 11:30am-10:30pm; Sunday – seasonal (please check)