Great Wave Off Kanagawa

You may not know this, my dear readers, but I’m leery about sushi places in these here parts. I find buffets especially fishy (mind the pun, because it was on purpose). I’ve no right to argue about quality, because we eat in a place far from bodies of water that provide fresh fish (or real sushi chefs for that matter). However, I hold firm to the personal belief that I have perspective in regards to everything sushi related in Kitchener-Waterloo; and therefore, a little reason to say what is worth buying. Indeed, no spot has escaped this trawling tongue. I’m a big fish in a small pond, and although the nautical metaphors may seem a little much they are not without due cause. Mine’s a mind that’s anchored with a whole lot of cynicism.

The all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant is a perfect example. It coddles the growling stomach and staunch wallet and therefore can compromise good eatin’; that is, if you know what else is out there. I unfortunately, do not. However, this works to my advantage, because I can give an honest, well catered review. Now, when it comes to any kind of authenticity in food I’ve loosened my kung-fu grip over the years, because there is no need for such crude inflexibilities. The French culinary school may be the only form of cooking trying to hold onto any kind of charmed legitimacy, but I dare say if food tastes good, it tastes good. But why this digression? Simple. The all-you-can-eat sushi bar antagonizes this dynamic perfectly, and shows that authenticity isn’t all that important, so long as it tastes palatable. What this says about our culture, I’ll save for a Baudrillard paper.

It’s easy to find what’s wrong and Othering with foreign restaurants catering to Western palettes: phonetic mis-spellings, inherent Orientalizations of names. This next place is certainly a portent of what can happen if we all don’t pay much attention to where we eat. The name alone alerted in me a kind of casus belli which made me quick to judge. An honourific Japanese ‘O’ in the title and an Orientalizing phonetic diminutive for ‘delicious’, packaged into a submissive, charming synonym of ‘Yummy,’ with ‘Sushi’ tacked on the end, made my company and I both guarded and hesitant. I haven’t been to an acceptable all-you-can-eat Sushi place in town since July 2006; my memory sinks that deep. All times after have been full of mis-orderings, hair in food, and callow servers who swoop in like seagulls to take your scraps away and make you feel unwelcome, spurring you to leave at a faster pace. Thankfully, it was a Monday and lunch, so there was no chance of the later happening. As for anything else, I’d have to eat and see.

It was O’Yummy Sushi’s grand opening, and the smell of the place certainly signified the newness of the establishment. Though I couldn’t exactly say how long it was open for, I could certainly sniff out that it was still in need of customers and cooked food to break it in. The smell of drywall and plaster still permeated its banquet hall, but that only made me all the more excited for trying what it had to offer; that and seeing if there was anything worth sticking around, save for the obvious 12.99 all-you-can-eat lunch price.

The space was another chronic creation of a contemporary all-you-can-eat sushi place. Brown, red, black and beige decorated a hall with booths along the windows and tables in the middle with a sushi bar up ahead where diners could happily watch their sushi being made and servers rush in and out of the kitchen feverishly. Orb shaped flood lights and ceiling hearths that washed the ceiling in pools of changing colour gave the hall a kind of urbane feel, reminiscent of the neon lighting that pervades huge metropolises. These kinds of stylistics materialize in so many all-you-can-eat sushi places around town. If there is any other design at the end of the sushi place spectrum it usually offers beige walls with bamboo trims, bonsai trees and lucky cats.

Taking it in cautiously, we were greeted by a server that took our orders to start rather than handing us the proverbial order sheet. This may have taken away from the ambiguity of customer/server but I couldn’t help but wonder how time consuming it eventually would become, having to eat and order again and again. The sentiment was certainly appreciated, and there’s no doubt in my mind that people often feel neglected even at arm’s length, but this effort could hardly last in an all-you-can-eat place. And it didn’t, we were eventually given order sheets. Yes, there was some confusion; yes, servers misunderstood our questions about items on the menu, but that kind of feature seems so common in every all-you-can-eat place, why bother to worry about it? The staff was quick to clear up any confusion by coming back and asking about our orders if there were any problems anyway. My only beef may have been that our tea was refilled too often, usually more than half still left, and the over-service became somewhat unbearable, but better than none at all.

The menu was simple trial and error. Ambiguous but well stocked, my company and I often had trouble deciphering how much of something we’d get, and often received items feeling foolish, especially when we thought we’d get more in a serving. This problem could have easily been avoided if the already bare menu gave a description of items. My face was red enough when I got what the dessert menu called a sugar ball and what came back as a dollar sized ball of deep fried dough slathered in cheap chocolate sauce. Customers may be familiar with sushi, but not everything on the menu is found at every sushi spot. Speaking of variety, assortment was a refreshing change at O’Yummy Sushi. Aside from offering the obvious, it offered some original ideas like cream cheese filled wantons. Crunchy on the outside, rich and smooth on the inside, it was a Western flavor that amalgamated well into a package from the East. There were other seemingly out of place but well appreciated options, like onion rings and, believe it or not, French fries. I can’t complain. Although at times I often wondered about particular item ideas. Baked mushrooms come to mind. They were nothing more than poorly stemmed mushroom caps baked in an oven sans stuffing or any kind of sauce. And a good amount of roll combinations were almost identical to others. The only difference was maybe one or two ingredients less in a roll or two kinds of rolls combined into one maki reminiscent of what one might see in the drain of a kitchen sink. That sounds harsh, but I never said they tasted bad.

We started our meal with seaweed salad and beef soba noodle soup. The salad was a pleasure. I couldn’t recall the last time I had a seaweed salad with just seaweed. Though a little sweet, I was glad to have found it. My soba on the other hand was a slap in the face. As if trying to pull the noodles over my own eyes, the dish wasn’t the buckwheat noodles I breathlessly expected, but instead the wheat based instant noodles one can expect to find in a tub. Though the stock was sweet and delicate and the beef added a surprising buttery taste to the dish, equivocation is inexcusable and a huge insult to any customer that comes to eat. The menu had other ambiguous names for dishes, like ‘sexy snapper roll’ and ‘ice island roll’. Needless to say, when they came to my table, I couldn’t tell what was potentially sexy or from an island. The salmon roses were actually an example of good culinary presentation: thin slices of fish wrapped around a ball of rice with a dollop of mayonnaise all in attempt to mimic the shape of a rose. Delicious and delicate, each piece demanded a hand gently pick it up; it would otherwise fall apart by way of chopsticks.

O’Yummy’s menu has infinite things to talk about: sweet and pleasing short ribs, an extensive vegetarian menu, pretty garnishes (though tasteless, seemingly tired and dried out, and no doubt prepped ahead of time) that it may just be the saving grace for the all you-can-eat sushi place in town. I can only hope it doesn’t become overwhelmed by an influx of customers in the future and compromise quality. I’m glad to have been humbled by such a seemingly unoriginal place. I’ve disqualified sushi a great deal, and considered O’Yummy just another drop in a pond which to my surprise turned into a great wave off the coast of Kanagawa.

O'Yummy Sushi

646 Erb Street West #101

Waterloo, ON

Phone: (519) 954-6555

Mon – Sat: 11:30 a.m. – 10:30 p.m.

Sun: 11:30 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.

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