Mikado - South

After seeing The Devil Wears Prada, Mom E. & I headed to Mikado for dinner. As always, we were impressed by the decor from the moment we entered; the waterwall at the entry, the hip-and-chic dark brown furniture, and the general ambience of the place gave it a very metro, Vancouver-esque feel.

We were seated right away and the server brought us warm (though slightly too cool for my tastes) towels for our hands right away. Our drink order was also taken quickly; Mom E. had the white wine while I chose green tea and my standard ice water with a wedge of lemon. Then, we got down to business. The very large menu (with different sections devoted to appetizers, seafood, grilled goodies, sushi, sashimi, and maki rolls) took us a few minutes to peruse, and then we finally decided: I was going to have the regular sushi combo, and Mom E. was going to have the miso soup, a small order of gyozas, and the herbed shrimp.

We got lost in conversation and failed to notice how much time had passed before our meals arrived, but it didn't seem to take long at all. The miso soup was served first, and then they brought out the shrimp and my order at the same time. We were mightily disappointed to find that the herbed shrimp (cost = $7.95) amounted to a mere two pieces of butterfly shrimp. Thankfully, Mom E. had her gyoza to look forward to, because there was barely enough shrimp there for her to even get a good taste of the herbs!

When my meal arrived, I looked around my table for some soy sauce. There was none. As a result, I had to get up from my table to steal a bottle of soy from the empty table beside ours. The server watched me do this (we even made eye contact), but failed to apologize for her oversight or even acknowledge the lack of soy at our table. That was a little annoying.

With my soy sauce/wasabi mix complete, I took a good look at my $16.95 meal, which came with 6 little salmon makis, two pieces of shrimp sushi, two pieces of salmon sushi, and what looked like 4 pieces of tuna sushi (maybe they were different types of fish but they didn't taste different at all). The cuts of fish were quite generous in size, although not nearly as thick as the pieces we enjoyed at Wasabi. As well, the Mikado gave me quite a bit more rice to try to "fill me up," but the rice wasn't nearly as flavourful as the freshly-cooled rice from Wasabi either. Finally, I was disappointed that there wasn't nearly the variety that I could get with a simple sushi combo at Toyko Express, in this sushi combination platter.

The one highlight of this meal was that the mini rolls were filled with salmon rather than cucumber (a standard cheap-out move made by most restaurants), but considering the price of the meal I felt this was warranted.


Overall, our meal was fair, but not amazing. The Mikado is the type of place you will want to go to for a large selection of decent, slightly overpriced Japanese fare in a hip dining environment. It isn't, however, the place to go to for the best sushi in town, or the cheapest. I would probably come here again, but not before I go to Wasabi or Yokozuna a few more times.

Rating: 7.5 / 10