Thursday, June 21, 2007

Taketomi Village 36th ave NE Calgary

Right beside Marlborough station in Calgary is a little gem of a Japanese restaurant. Taketomi Village might not look like much from the street, but once inside you're pulled into a peaceful classic style Japanese sushi bar environment. Mani the sushi chef is very talkative and enjoys having the company. He even makes a special piece for us, but I'll get to that later.

After getting stuck in traffic and making many detours we see the Village. I had passed it a few time on my adventures but never stopped in. I am not disappointed that we ended up going here over any other place I even returned a few days later for a snack. Anyways on to the restaurant.

I ordered myself a piece of each of the following: ebi; tamago; inari; white maguro; toro; sake;unagi; hokekkai. Can you see a certain level of consistancy in the ordering? This has been a good time for tamago, the past few places I have tried have good tamago, this place was no diffrent. A little sweeter than the other places but it worked well on its own and with a bit of wasabi and soya.

The tuna, both the maguro and the toro were so succulent and soft, I didn't even feel the toro. When they say that toro is meant to melt in the mouth, they mean it, this was one of the best pieces of toro I've had in a while.

Before leaving Mani, the chef, gave us a little something special, what he called mamashita. There was a wide variety of meats on it, there was ebi, toro, scallop and sake with some roe on top, a little bit of avocado paste, topica. This piece was very interesting it offered a cool taste with many diffrent textures that mixed very well. Thank you!

We had a very pleasant time, the service was good, the restaurant itself was appealing and the food was great. All in all I give this restaurant a 8 out of 10. I expect that once I try some more of their food it will fluctuate, but just for their sushi they received this high mark. I docked a few marks for not adding wasabi on the pieces, which at this point is almost becoming my problem, I must start asking all the chefs to add their own to the pieces. It gets a bonus though because Mani grated some fresh ginger for me. I wanted to ask for grated wasabi but thats not how it worked out. Also gets an extra point for presentation. The Unagi and the Mamashita was very nicely presented and each got their own plate. "Very nice".

But thats it for now folks,


Thank you all, Mata ne!