On Seto Sushi, Fish Heads, and Cookies.

Seto Sushi

I finally made it to Seto Sushi! Seriously, I have attempted to eat at this restaurant a dozen times, and either I get there between lunch and dinner, on a holiday, or on a Tuesday, their day off. That last one has happened more times than I care to admit. I was beginning to think the place was just a storefront, but I’m now pleased to say it IS real, and it IS tasty.

Of course, by the time we left and I took a photo, they’d closed again between lunch and dinner. It’s a tight window I tell you, a tight, tight window.

bike1

My friend Tracy joined me yesterday for a day of biking and eating – we both rode to Richmond, met up at Seto for lunch (conveniently close to Cap’s Bikes, should we have needed anything), then cycled south for dessert.

The interior of Seto has a very interesting setup; each table is enclosed by four short walls, so it’s very private, and I imagine very difficult to find your friends if you’ve arrived late! While they’re not for claustrophobes, I like these kind of booths, and know I would have been THRILLED with them as a child.

Seto Sushi

The menu at Seto Sushi is enormous, and we ordered a few standard items, as well as some that were newer to us.

Compared to the rest of the meal, the gomaae ($4.75) that we started with was surprisingly bland. The dressing tasted watered down, and the spinach was chewier than I would have liked. A less than ideal start (for my tastes, anyways), but it got better from there.

gomaae

For sashimi, we ordered the aji tataki (horse mackerel, $24), which was phenomenal. It’s a very oily fish, so it’s wonderful to dip in sweet, citric ponzu sauce.

aji mackerel

After we’d been snacking on the fresh aji for a while, they brought out a second plate, which was the rest of the fish, battered and deep-fried. Head-to-fin eating at its finest!

aji mackerel bones and head

The fish was small and delicate enough that once fried, the bones could be chewed through, including the head. Deep-fried fish eyeballs, anyone?

fish head

In addition to horse mackerel, Seto Sushi also serves something you don’t see too often on a menu ’round these parts – horse! It’s a traditional food in Parma, where I lived for a year, but rarely seen in Canada. It’s not on Seto’s menu, but the horse sashimi is advertised on various boards around the restaurant.

Next came our rolls, which were the spicy tuna ($4) and anago battera (teriyaki eel pressed in square mold on sushi rice, $14). The texture of the tuna was incredibly soft and almost paste-like; I think they minced and mixed it with the spicy sauce, which had just the right amount of heat.

spicy tuna roll

The pressed roll (only the second pressed roll I’ve had, the first was at Sushi Hachi) was served warm. It was composed of two layers of well-flavoured sushi rice with a sheet of nori between them, topped by a layer of BBQ’ed eel and a drizzle of sweet soy. This roll was simple, and depended solely on the quality of its few ingredients to make it shine. They did.

pressed eel sushi

The last thing we split was a bowl of ramen ($9). Even though it was sunny, the second I saw soup on the menu, I had to have it! It was a good bowl, the best part of being the miso broth and firm noodles.

miso ramen