Con't Adventurous Day in J-Town - SHISO TREE CAFE

Location: 3160 Steeles Avenue East, Unit #1 (Hwy 404 & Steeles Ave.)
Access: along TTC bus route, parking available
Price: Avg $13 - $18
Blogsters' Rating: 3.5/5

Here comes the most important part of the day at J-Town... SHISO TREE CAFE!  We have heard numerous good reviews about this Japanese and Italian fusion restaurant, so we invited some friends and decided to give it a try.

Shiso Tree Cafe has a very warm and comfortable appearance, and the Japanese waitress are very welcoming.  The cafe is filled with small tables for two.  There is also one Tatami room available to accommodate bigger groups (picture on the right).

Their Lunch Menu is very simple and there are only three pages.  However, there are more than enough dishes to choose from and the prices are very affordable.

Their soup of the day was Russian Borscht.  The soup was perfectly flavored with the right amount of tomatoes, beef, and black pepper.  They have also added little pieces of Rotini in the soup for more texture.  The Shiso Tree Salad was not that fresh, but the homemade Wafu dressing made it better.  It had a strong sesame taste, which really opened up our appetite.

Shiso Tree is very famous for their Fresh Cut Fries, and out of the four available choices, we ordered two of them - Nori Fries and Okonomiyaki Fries.

Nori Fries is Tossed with homemade Wafu dressing and Japanese seaweed.  Those of you who is a fan of seaweed will adore the Nori Fries.  The garnish, the smell, and the taste.. it is all SEAWEED!  However, the Wafu dressing made the fries very soggy and mushy.  In addition to that, when the Nori fries started to cool down after 15 to 20 minutes, it had a fishy scent and taste to it.

The Okonomiyaki Fries is the most unique.  It is dressed with homemade steak sauce, Japanese mayo, bonito fish flakes and green onions.  The fries were very crispy.  The combination of the homemade steak sauce and Japanese mayo has a little sour taste and along with the green onions makes this dish very refreshing. The sourness also compensated for the heaviness of the oily deep fried goodness. 

For our main courses, we ordered the Okonomiyaki, Smoked Salmon, Tomato Clams, and Carbonara. They are all are served with spaghetti and came with half a slice of garlic bread.  The garlic breads were thick-cut and toasted very nicely - crunchy outside, and soft inside.  The pastas were cooked al dente,  perfect texture - firm to the bite and not soft.

Okonomiyaki Pasta - sautéed onions, bacon, and garlic, and dressed like an Okonomiyaki style pancake
The Okonomiyaki Pasta is exactly like the Okonomiyaki Fries except that it is served with spaghetti.  There was a generous amount of bacon pieces and bonito flakes in the dish. Overall it tasted very fresh and had a slightly sour aftertaste.

Smoked Salmon - Light cream sauce and dill
The Smoked Salmon Pasta came with a very heavy and rich cream sauce.  It is not light, like how the menu described.  Much like an Alfredo sauce, it is very filling.  However, the Smoked Salmon was a little bit fishy and too salty.

Tomato Clams - Marinara, white wine, and clams
The Tomato Clams Pasta has a sweet and sour taste.  The Marinara sauce was made of tomato, garlic, herbs, and onions.  The clams are much smaller than what we have expected but there was a generous amount of them.  In addition, you can definitely taste the wine in this dish but it is not overpowering at all, and it helps to bring out other flavours.

Carbonara - Bacon, garlic, and white wine

The Carbonara also came with a heavy cream sauce, coated evenly on every strand of the pasta.  There were a good amount of bacon on the dish.  With the Parmesan cheese and freshly grained Black Pepper,  the Carbonara is like Heaven on Earth!

After all, our favourite food at Shiso Tree Cafe was the Okonomiyaki Fries.  The service was slow in general, possibly because they were lacking waitstaff.  We had a little incident with the Carbonara when one of our friends found a tiny strand of sharp metal in the dish.  We believed that the metal piece came from a can and got mixed into the pasta. After we notified the waitress, she apologized and had the chef make us a fresh bowl of pasta. If the metal incident did not happen, we would have given a higher rating. Overall, we enjoyed dining at Shiso Tree cafe, and would recommend it to other friends.