WAKO SUSHI AND SAKE

Continuing my quest to explore the restaurants in my own neighbourhood. I headed to Wako Sushi and Sake with a group of friends from university who also live in the North York area.

Atmosphere: Wako is on the smaller side of restaurants and can comfortably seat around 20 diners. The sushi bar is at the back of the dining space and lacquered wood dominate the decor. I was surprised by how worn down the menus were. It was a quiet Wednesday night and we lingered over our meal while catching up. Other tables seemed to have the same idea and the pace of the meal was slow and relaxed.

Service: The night we visited, service was sub-par. It was difficult to get a server’s attention to refill tea and to get the bill. For a group our size, it would’ve been easier if they had set a teapot at our table. We ordered a large sushi boat and when it arrived, each person had to scramble to make sure their dishes and cutlery was out of the way. On a quiet night with less than half the restaurant occupied, a little extra attention to the customers who are present goes a long way to ensure repeated visits.

Food: Enough sushi to happily feed 6 people came to just over $20 per person after tax and tip. This was a pretty good deal given the quantity of items we ordered. To split, we ordered the large Sushi, Sashimi and Roll boat that had over 80 pieces and included full size dragon, spicy tuna and dynamite rolls. On top of that, we tried the spider roll and North York roll, with unagi filling and a grilled mackerel. We were each served a bowl of salad and miso soup to start. The salad dressing was on the watery side but the miso soup was standard.

For the boat, I liked the combination of all three types of sushi. The sashimi selection was basic with salmon, tuna, red snapper and white tuna. Each piece was fresh and the presentation was pretty. There was no tamago, squid, surf clam or octopus. Both the dynamite and red dragon rolls were fine but I would’ve liked more heat with my spicy tuna roll. My favourite roll of the night was the North York one. It arrived still hot, had great flavour, lots of sauce and a good rice to filling ratio. The grilled mackerel was a little on the dry side and only ok.

The one menu item that I wanted to try was their whole fish sashimi. It looked really interesting and a good meal to split. Other than that, Wako offers good sushi at a great price for customers that live nearby. A little more attention to service would improve my rating from a 3.0 to 3.5.