Place a bit small so it's always crowded. But the food and service is great. Best sushi in town!
If you want great sushi, this is the place! A lot better than many of the headline grabbing places!
It’s been a year or two since my first visit to Shima-Ya Sushi. It’s run by a Japanese couple. They’re a bit hidden but London Drugs is your best landmark. Hours. Closed on Monday and Tuesday. We dropped in on a Friday evening (around 7:30pm) and it was surprisingly not too busy. It did randomly pick up and get busy half an hour later. It’s a small, 20 seater (four tables and 8 seats at the sushi bar). Service is friendly and our green tea was constantly refilled throughout our meal.
Their sushi and sashimi are so fresh. It just feels like I'm eating in japan! Cannot resist everytime I drive by - I always have to come in for lunch! Yummy!
Love the seafood chawamushi, it tastes even better than one at Isami. The portion is smaller but it has so much flavour. My husband gushes over the flavour. The spicy scallop roll is really good and very fresh. Just a bit disappointed that it is not spicy at all. We also had the three kind assorted sashimi and house special dynamite roll. The dynamite roll is really good and prawn they use is big and very fresh and good quality. The salmon sashimi and scallop sashimi are really good and fresh. Their salmon sashimi is one of the best I've taste anywhere. They use very good quality rice here so it makes the sushi roll tastes really delicious. We also love Mai dai kama sakamushi which is the steamed Japanese fish with sake. The fish meat is fatty and very soft and tastes delicious. It comes with vinegar dipping sauce. The price for sashimi is bit high and the portion is smaller than other restaurants but all the food we taste here are really good with high quality and are very fresh.
Shima-Ya was highly recommended by one set of friends and not by another, so we decided to visit it ourselves. Overall we enjoyed the food put out in front of us. The food was worth the price. However, I was a bit disappointed in the ratio of rice to fish in both the Battera and the nigiri. For the nigiri, I basically just kept eating half the amount of rice. The amount of wasabi spread onto the nigiri was quite good though. We don't think we will return simply because we had a really great experience at Isami, who also had much better prices.
You get what you pay for. This place is a little more pricey than others on Victoria Drive but the quality and taste of the food is far superior. The staff are really nice too :).
This place looks ordinary and doesn't offer good looking gimmicky dishes that popular joints downtown and izakayas provide (which are awesome food too by the way). What it has instead are solid old school classics. It's not "just" sushi by any accounts.
Pure goodness!. Read all the reviews and totally agreed with them. Good thing we went early, small place, excellent food and service. I'm still drooling for more. No fancy decors or crazy menu.
Little Gem of a Place. I would highly recommend the Alaska Don or Omakase sets for those who enjoy a great selection of fresh sashimi. The Alaska Don't is my favorite. It comes complete with set Giant Scallops, Amaebi, Fresh Uni, Squid, Ikura fish roe. The sweetness from the sashimi blends so perfectly with the creamy uni and ikura. So good that I had it two days in a row ;)
Summary: For a place like this skips the rolls and go for the specialty sashimi.
Authentic Japanese delight. Small shop, but the food is delicious here. highly recommend this place as a stop for anyone wanting to try really great food at a very reasonable price! I don't write a lot of reviews, but I will mention that the omakaze was incredible. Fish didn't feel frozen, and the portion size of each fish was crazy on the sushi.
The food: hamachi was buttery, toro was fatty, the entire collection is to die for!
Don't miss out!
Delicious!. Very good sushi, and very good customer service.
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