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KAIZEN SUSHI

44 St. Clair Ave. E.

416-840-9622

http://www.kaizensushi.ca

$100 for dinner for two with sake, tax and tip

I hate to imagine the conversations that the owners of Kaizen Sushi have been having around their kitchen table of late. Their unfortunate timing in opening a sushi restaurant at Yonge and St. Clair this past fall must occasion the most painful hand-wringing.

Launching a restaurant is a great act of faith and a terrible risk even at the best of times, which is what these poor people thought they were in when they started the process a year or so ago. Remember the halcyon days of early 2008? Before the bubble burst, Kaizen's owners probably figured that the sushi would be going out of their new place in wheelbarrows. Platinum cards! Boutique sake! High rollers ordering tatty tuna and hamachi handrolls by the carload!

Now they are giving it away for 20 per cent off the menu prices - an obvious act of desperation on the part of restaurateurs who know that people still eat out during recessions, but eat out less often, go to cheaper places, spend less on their meals and tip less. And they go to the places they know. This behaviour is especially worrisome for a new sushi restaurant, sushi being perceived as an expensive item.

Kaizen, though, has cleverly tried to position itself as charming and upscale but nonetheless inexpensive. Although it's obvious no high-priced design firm put its imprimatur here, the room is lovely: At the front, sweet little fish with faux brass finishes hang along one wall, and a cool, retro white chandelier sheds warm light. At the very back of the long room is a pretty pink and blue light box behind the sushi bar. It doesn't quite match the three big red and white lampshades hanging over the bar, but they're artsy too and the whole effect is pleasantly attractive. Jungle-print chairs and banquettes don't hurt either.

Japanophiles hurting for a sushi fix but leery of spending big bucks can content themselves by filling up on the likes of udon (a superb rendition of the classic Japanese meal-in-a bowl: top-drawer chicken broth full to the brim with moist chicken, shrimp, scallops, al dente veg, both enoki and shitake mushrooms and a few tempura shrimps on top for the sin factor) or okonomiyaki (a crisp savoury pancake topped with seafood, chicken, barely sautéed cabbage and small bits of scrambled egg, all held together with credible soy-based sauce and not too much spicy mayo).

I am not a big fan of spicy mayo, which is most often found in inexpensive Japanese restaurants and is (to me) unappealing both visually (it's off-white) and on the tongue. I am, however, strangely sanguine about the white glop that covers the tuna in Kaizen's tartare on renkon: The combo of a decent-size cube of raw tuna atop crisp-fried lotus-root chips with spicy mayo is inexplicably delicious. The kitchen wrests victory from the jaws of defeat again when it takes a cliché - barely grilled sirloin wrapped around al dente asparagus - and adds a layer of crisped salmon skin.

Having filled up on the heavier food, one has only to order a few sushi for the thrill of it. While Kaizen is no Omi or Kaiseki Sushi and makes no claims to producing art on the plate, their signature "forbidden maki" is pretty cute. On the outside it has tiny cubes of raw scallop marinated in slightly sweetened and vinegared soy; on the inside of the rice roll is shrimp tempura, shitake mushroom, asparagus, avocado and cucumber for crunch. The restaurant does a competent job with the usual raw yellowtail, salmon and tuna, at very friendly prices. Expensive exotica like uni and toro are not on the menu, but it may be that those little bites of divine decadence from the sea are just memories now.