Sail Sushi (Japanese)

 Sail Sushi is a "reincarnation" of Omi Sushi, located at 4352 Kingston Road in Scarborough, close to the intersection with Lawrence and west of Morningside. I had done a writeup of Omi that somehow disappeared in the transition to the new site, but no matter as I would have had to replace it anyways.

Sail has a nice enough interior with plenty of booths, iPad menus, good/fresh low-sodium soy sauce, traditional teapots left at diner's tables, but strangely still has wasteful (and expensive) disposable chopsticks; sadly I had forgotten my reusables.

Mishy loved the spicing of the seaweed salad. Green salad was alright but rather boring; dressing lacked any sort of pique. Miso soup was good and savoury. Shrimp tempura was light and flaky but the sauce was somewhat weak.

On to the entrées, we both liked the chicken teriyaki (no "rubbery" from Mishy.) She loved the black bean chicken calling it "amazing" and the spicy vegetable fried rice was "to die for". Sail's signature sushi was quite good. Avocado/cucumber rolls were very good and I enjoyed the sesame seed garnish. I also enjoyed the Japanese fried chicken with its mayonnaise-based sauce. Spicy salmon sushi was quite good, even better than expected.

However, not everything was so superlative: chicken pad thai had a very generic sauce that was too sweet. Mishy referred to the chicken balls as "grease balls" and they were indeed oily; I still liked them however but less than if they were daubed first. Pumpkin tempura, usually a Mishy favourite, was merely not bad as it was also rather oily. Neither of us also liked the spicy beef teriyaki; it was made with a cheaper cut that lacked in flavour; the sauce was better than what it was applied to. The beef teriyaki was slightly better but still made with the same cheap flavourless cut. Neither could be remotely compared to the beef teriyaki of, say, Sushi Legend.


Sail has a large dessert selection and I managed to try almost all of it... chocolate ice cream and mousse were both very good. Strawberry mousse was thicker but with less flavour; however Mishy loved it. Mango yogurt was fantastic. We both loved the ginger ice cream... "incredibly creamy" said Mishy, as well as strawberry ice cream. Strawberry and mango jello was good.

We didn't much care for the green tea ice cream, however, Nanaimo bars although unique to Sail and otherwise good had a strange aftertaste of Play-Doh (which is made with flour incidentally) and the fried banana was unripe and had no topping at all. Otherwise the desserts were the best part of the meal.



I had not given a very positive review to Sail when it was known as Omi, and unfortunately this somewhat continues. It has improved, but the price has also gone up to $15.99, the point that it is on par with other sushi AYCEs where everything was just about perfect. There were several shortcomings as noted. As well I had issues with the service before and they are still present; even with the iPad menus a couple of the items I ordered didn't arrive (for one of them I was simply told it was busy so order it again) and I noticed that they would drop off items and leave empty-handed without picking up the dirty plates etc. which I always put on the end of the table to signify that they may be removed.

Thus, although I didn't mind the lunch here I don't think that I would return at this price point; there are better offerings for this amount nearby.

Rating: 7/10.