September 15, 2006 Archives
Went to try out Fusion Sushi, that conveyor belt place discovered by thericebowl. The lady said that they opened some two months ago, which was prior to the last time I walked past it to get a computer component from a shop nearby. At that time, I didn't think it had the conveyor belt, and was a rather anonymous Japanese restaurant (which, for some reason, I subconsciously believed that it was owned by Cantonese people - and it was - but then, what's the proportion of Asian restaurants actually owned by Cantonese-speaking people?).
The sushi was pretty ordinary. Not bad, but just very ordinary. Many of the makis we had lacked tightness. There was a selection of those mixed makis, like California, spicy salmon, soft-shell crab, and tempura shrimp. They didn't use tempura flakes, but rather puffed rice. For some reason, I thought that the quality is decent, given that it was a conveyor belt sushi, b/c Genki Sushi, the Asian chain of conveyor belt sushi, made me used to sub-par sushi (with pre-cut fish, and machine-produced rice balls - which wasn't the case at Fusion).
The patronage was extremely fobby. Fobby Taiwanese facing us, fobby Mainlandese on one side, fobby HKese on the other, and us, the odd ethnic Chinese Malaysian / CBC-or-QBC duo pretending to be fobby, and then the French-speaking FOBs who arrived after we were done with our respective tenth plate.
(The specialty of the house is a "pizza sushi", which is crab meat, tobiko, and J-mayo, on a fried rice cake - not so different from the idea I make of Taiwan's McRice)
Next to the Subway's, on Lincoln Street, that small street perpendicular w/ Guy, between De Maisonneuve and Sherbrooke. Opening special, for $2 a plate (the sign wasn't there last week, I think). Alternatively, there's a $23 buffet on Saturdays.
So, it was either Rockaberry's, or I suspect, the Chinese food I ingested before going to Rockaberry's. For some reason (nostalgia of HK), I like going to restaurants to order cold cuts served on rice. It's not something I've done awful lot here (twice), but it'd be one of those default meals (w/ Japanese noodles at Ajisen) I'd take when my imaginations ran dry, and my guts for jumping into a new restaurant by myself lacked seriously.
For some reason, I imagined Rockaberry's to be shinier - especially from pictures - but the impression I got was "sticky table sides", as I sat there killing time before the other guests arrived. And when they did, there was an awful lot of catching up, and random chatter, around over-sweet desserts. Tania had the Rockaberry Special, which is, to me, a big ball of cream. Sabina had the Toblerone cake/mousse, which was also a big ball of cream too, but sitting on a cake containing bits of molten re-hardened Toblerone chocolate. Talal was sitting at the opposite edge of the table (for four), so I neglected to ask/try what he had (the last time he was there, he mentionned that the Mille-feuille had none of the layers that Mille-feuilles would usually have, plus, you guessed it, way too much cream).
Very sweet desserts aren't my cup of tea, and the milk I ordered did nothing at all to help dampen the sweetness. My favourite cake is a strawberry shortcake that the bakery near my house (Privilege) makes. I will most probably order one for my birthday, which I plan to celebrate a half-week in advance, per cause of various friends' departures from town the weekend that's half a week downstream.
I woke up several times during the night, with symptoms usually attributed to spicy stuff or an intensely garlicky or oniony meal. It's 7:30AM, almost, and I so want to go back to bed...
We briefly mentioned it at tonight's Rockaberry's gathering (I had the strawberry + peaches crumb, after having a strawberry + rhubarb on a previous takeout occasion), but maybe I subconsciously absorbed it from The Media: the Wii's coming out on November 19th. :O