Restaurant Kiku — Restaurant in Montreal

What better way to celebrate the arrival of winter but with cold fish and warm saké! On a dark snowy November Sunday-night the Missus and I skated and skidded down the icy Monkland avenue sidewalk to our neighbouhood Sushi place to treat ourselves. First, the hot towels - so welcome and wonderful - especially as these are cotton towels, not some rude scratchy polyester nightmare. I had a large carafe of warm saké of course, and the other side of the table chose a Chardonnay to start. For my main I asked about the Omakase (Chef's discretion) and my sweetie went for the Sushi/Sashimi platter. Entrée's of yummy gyoza were almost perfect, the follow-up tempura was piping hot and not at all oily. Perfection! Missus's sushi and sashimi both were delicious as I happily discovered when when admitted that she had ordered too much food and started discretely flinging fish onto my plate. My Omakase started of with a plate of salmon slices - the edges of which were ever-so-lightly seared - beautifully arrayed in a shallow pool of ginger/soy/magic sauce. This was followed by two also very delicious types of maki rolls - wrapped not in nori but in rice-paper. I apologize that my review is so vague, the saké was delicious.

No room for desert, having been commandeered into eating all that extra food from the wifely plate. :-D

If you go on a Sunday night without having first reserved, go early. The place was hopping by 7:15 and full by 7:30.

The only downer was one client - a regular there, apparently - that got huffy with the wait-staff for not serving him fast enough. (There's one in every crowd, right?) Wait-staff dealt with him politely and respectfully, thereby increasing my respect...

ぜんぜん美味しくないよ!｡･ﾟ(д

Where to begin. First of all, the prices at Mikado are very high. The average main dishes are probably 20% more expensive than most other Montreal Japanese restaurants ($30 for a sushi deluxe without soup or salad, $8 for gyoza, etc). I wouldn't mind this if the food backed it up. That's where Mikado falls incredibly short. The sushi was terrible (the fish was not fresh and the platter only came with 4 pieces when the waiter told me there would be 6). The sashimi was even worse. It was not cut properly and they tried to pass off some tiny shreds as full pieces. On top of this, they served octopus (tako) as a main part of the sashimi platter. In Japan (and anywhere else for that matter), tako is the cheapest dish and it's borderline insulting to serve it as a main feature in a sashimi platter (especially at their price). The wasabi was brownish green which tells me it was made from a powder. They try to be creative with the rolls (was that apple in there?!) but it was not executed by anyone with talent.

I relocated to Montreal in the summer from San Francisco. The Japanese restaurants in SF are wonderful and I didn't think Montreal could compare. That's not the case. There are plenty of wonderful sushi and izakaya restaurants in the area (try Imadake for the best). But Mikado is ridiculous. I'm sure they're in business because they're the only show in town. But pretty soon, the locals will smarten up and drive just a little distance to get a quality meal. Easily the worst Japanese restaurant I've been to since moving here.

PS - The "A Zagat User" reviews seem like...