I’ve been trying to get to J-Town for years.
But getting up to Markham is a trial for a person without a car. From the apartment where I was staying in Toronto the one-way trip would have taken 1 hour and 30 minutes by metro and bus. And I’d probably want to come back downtown after, so add another 4.5 hours to roll me back, approximately…if I was going to go to J-Town I was going to make the most of it.
Grilled octopus, freshwater BBQ eel, Pacific tuna (the sustainable kind), sweet shrimp salad with Wafu dressing, and my two treats – eggplant namban (deep-fried and soaking in sweet vinegar) and marinated burdock root salad. I skipped the cheap, fast-food curries, the not made-in-house udon and soba, the pickled plum onigiri (probably made with the msg-soaked pickled plum not the preservative-free version they also sell in the food section of the adjoining grocery store), and the Atlantic salmon. I also skipped the grilled mackerel and black cod that I love so much, because I know what that tastes like already when done well.
J-Town is kind of like a very mini-Little Japan. There’s a little grocery store (specialty items bought mostly by Japanese people) in a store that’s really three counter-service restaurants in one. A noodle place, a sushi place, and a fish shop that’s also a sushi place, plus a bakery and an all-natural meat counter – think Wagyu beef and Mennonite chicken. Apparently the Mennonite’s standards are good enough for the Japanese. Good enough for me too, then.
Across the cute outside walkway there’s an isakaya with what seems to be the most interesting menu around – real ramen is the most boring thing, or maybe the yakitori, but there are all sorts of interesting uses of chicken parts, beef parts, pork parts, and sauces combined in gourmet snack-sized dishes, plus tons of high-end sakes and drinks, and not horribly overpriced.
Next door is a little boutique with a few artisan counters – some clothes, some jewelry, a rice maker distributor, and a Japanese DVD rental place. You can’t buy any, though, so if you live far away, skip it.
Back to the food. The lunch specials are affordable. Chirashi-like bowls of tuna and salmon and avocado on seasoned rice with miso soup (the not from a package kind. Yes!) and green tea for under $10. Bigger bento boxes of grilled fish (my favourites mentioned above) on rice, with mini side salads, some breaded cutlets, a drizzle of creamy dressing, and some pickles for a healthy filling lunch for about $14, and cheap noodles in soup that will fill you up in a hurry – the “curry” that the Japanese are so fond of but has absolutely nothing to do with freshly ground spices – for about $8 all-in.
The grilled octopus? Tough. The sweet teriyaki sauce couldn’t save it, though it looked amazing thanks to perfect grilling…a few hours ago, before it got acquainted with the fridge. The shrimp on the shrimp salad? Well, the salad was on special so it had been sitting around a little too long, I think, so the shrimp were sustainably bland, as in they weren’t getting any better and there no flavour there at all to help it get any worse. Should have gone with the nigiri.
But the nigiri sushi à la carte? Amazing. The options were amazing. The uni was actually fresh and gloopy. Not as though they’d just taken it from its shell or anything. You could see in the counter-top that it came pre-sized and placed in the tray that resembles an ice cube tray to wait for people like me to buy it, but it had JUST been placed there, not a few days before. The BC tuna? Creamy. The mackerel. Vinegar-marinated. I’m okay with that, but it makes it harder to know how fresh it is, and I don’t like it that sweet. The scallop? Divine. Soft and buttery.
But my favourite was the simple eggplant namban. Tastes even better on day two after soaking in the sweet vinegar longer, so the perfect take-out food for a restaurant and for a customer who likes leftovers, since eating a ton of deep-fried eggplant – good for you as an eggplant i – is still not the greatest idea. I don’t know if the burdock root was taken directly from a package, pre-chopped and pre-marinated, or if that was done on site, but the sweetness of the root vegetable was addictive, and a good appetizer for all that nigiri sushi. The nigiri cost a mini fortune – about $30 for 8 pieces – but for the quality, the freshness and the selection was worth it. How many places offer two kinds of mackerel, 4 kinds of tuna (some more sustainable than others, but no waste of the unsustainable ones at least since they probably come from one giant tuna and are professionally chopped and sliced here), 3 or 4 kinds of shrimp (two local, sustainable ones), and some cuts you don’t find anywhere else?
You pay for quality, and with your travel time. A rare treat.
Leave a Reply