Sushi Torii (Japanese)

Sushi Torii is located at 126 Wellington St. W. is Aurora, the third bordering municipality north of Toronto. It's just west of Yonge St. and also west of the Aurora GO station, so convenient to get to by either means and can be considered transit-accessible. Pop is canned $1.50, not AYCD. Reusable chopsticks are used thankfully. Sushi Torii has a modern and causal interior. iPad menus are used. Soy at table was slightly salty, but fresh and flavourful, so we didn't ask for low-sodium.

Garden salad was quite good, with house mildly-wasabi dressing, and it was spring mix which is more interesting than plain lettuce. Miso soup was very good, with a nice beery fermented flavour even when cold. Mishy loved the seaweed salad indicating it wasn't overloaded with sauce and was well-balanced.

We both loved the salmon nigiri as it was very fresh. Philadelphia roll had sauce on it, which is unique, and didn't detract from it. Red snapper nigiri aka tilapia as good though had red edges. Butterfish nigiri aka escolar was fresher and good.

Beef teriyaki was alright but its sauce was too sweet and with not enough other flavour, though the beef was good. We found the same with the chicken teriyaki. Sweet-and-sour chicken was indeed sweet, but quite good with plenty of flavour. Mishy didn't like the chicken skewers at all, but I thought they were very good.

Spring rolls were about the same as other places. We both noted that the vegetable tempura was rather oily and not flaky, but wasn't too bad. Shrimp tempura was much improved; light and flaky, not oily. General Tso chicken was good although not exemplary; the sauce could have been a little more flavourful.

Chicken katsu cutlet was quite good, though the sauce seemed more like ketchup than most. Mishy said the gyoza were average and they were a bit oily, but had a nice flavour. Mishy didn't like the pork shiu mai at all saying they had a bad aftertaste, but they were good for me and not much different than other places... I don’t think Mishy is big on them. Beef dumpling soup was original, and it worked and was quite good. Golden shrimp was quite good in a sweetish creamy sauce. Pan fried mushroom was good but also could have used a little more flavour.

For dessert, banana tempura was very good and Mishy loved it, as did I. Jelly was cherry Jell-o, and was good. Mango pudding and yogurt shot glasses were both delicious. Red bean ice cream was slightly freezer burned, vanilla somewhat less. Mango ice cream was excellent with a creamy flavour. Weekend lunch is $27.99 (it was $18.99 only three years ago when we did this writeup pre-lockdown!... everywhere has increased by a similar percentage.) This is a bit less than average these days. Although there was nothing really stand-out at Sushi Torii, there was nothing bad either, so it was a good lunch and not bad for the cost.

Rating: 7 – 7.5 / 10