Every time I go to SilverCity on Yonge and Highway 7, I always pass this restaurant – Kaori Japanese Restaurant. It use to be Outback Steakhouse but a few years back it converted into a Japanese restaurant.
A few nights ago, the over emotional me wanted to stuff myself with food, I decided to try something new – the restaurant behind SilverCity.
I read on the Internet that is was a Korean owned restaurant and sometimes the sashimi is served somewhat frozen, but nothing wrong with the freshness of the fish. Luckily for me, no fish arrived frozen, but isn’t all fish is suppose to be kept frozen in Ontario? Don’t quote me on that, I could be wrong.
When I first walked into the restaurant, it was quite and lots of secluded seats for group events. Quite and quaint with soft music blaring on the speakers. The entire place still had the wood work that was left behind from Outback, but with all the decorations you would never know it use to be a steakhouse.
Our server seated us in a quite spot, somewhere not a lot of servers would see us. And yes, our servers didn’t see us unless it was to serve us food. Water? Tea? Alcohol? There were never around to serve us that after our first cups. It was also quite difficult to gain their attention to get any sort of fluids either.
Like a lot of Korean owned restaurant, we were served sided dishes. They served potatoes and glass noodles on a very unique platter which I liked quite a bit. They tasted like any other typical side dishes and didn’t make a big impact on me.
The first item we ordered was Soft Shell Crab. The menu mentioned that it was “flash fried.” I honestly don’t really know what that means, but I do know that Japanese fried soft shell crab does not consist of bread crumbs or any major deep fried batter coating like the one plated in front of us. The crab was deep fried and plated in a very spacious manner over a bed of shredded lettuce. It reminded me of this cheap gimmick that cooks used so visually there is more food than what is actually there. It was quite crunchy and bland without the dipping sauce. The tempura sweet potato sticks on the side tasted much better than the crab itself.
Our main dish was a sushi and roll platter. It looked delicious when it arrived. I was pretty excited to dig in when I saw it. First things first, none of the fish was frozen on the platter. The fish was not very fresh, but decent enough to eat. However, they tend to put a lot of rice into the sushi. After eatting, we all felt like we were going turn into rice balls. Seriously, not a good feeling to have.
On another note, their tea they served us was quite decent. The only problem we had with it was the cup. It conducted heat so well that it was untouchable and we couldn’t even find a way to pick it up without our fingers burning up. Sad. I think it was the first time I ever drank so little tea at an Asian restaurant.
At the end of the day, I would love to go back to try their Korean dishes because it seemed like all the people who dined there were mostly Korean. Will I go there for more sushi? Not if I want to turn into a rice ball!
Kaori Japanese Restaurant
30 High Tech Road
Richmond Hill, ON L4B 4M3
Phone: 905-707-8858
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