Oyasato Japanese Food

Oyasato Japanese Food has been around for more than ten years and recently, long-time chef Yoshi Takahashi has taken ownership of the small shop in Garden City Centre.  Since the change-over, Oyasato has seen some minor cosmetic changes, but the home-feel and great taste are still prominent.

Yoshi seems to have done a little redectorating exactly the way I would have done it....with posters of samurai movies and a small collection of anime memorabilia.

Kagemusha

Samurai Fiction

Ran

The shop is a nice, cozy little place, and as a result, gets full pretty quickly, but at the same time, the turnover is pretty quick because most clientele are there to get a quick bite to eat and rush off. 

Overall, then menu hasn't changed to much, except some of the less popular items were deleted....for example, no more nattou roll.

I got a couple of starter sushi and found that everything was very fresh, the rice was good, and the ratio of fish to rice was perfect.

Unagi was delicious, as expected.

The salmon was nice and marbled, typical of Atlantic salmon.

Tuna rolls were good too, not too much rice, which was nice and moist (not dried out like a lot of places).

The miso soup was different than most other places.  Typically, you'll find perfectly cubed tofu and if you're lucky, some seaweed in standard-issue miso soups that are cooked from powdered miso mix.  Oyasato uses actual miso paste as a base, and to add a home-made feel to the miso soup, they added tama-negi(onion) to the standard tofu and seaweed.  Right away, you can tell the miso is different from what one might be used to.

I ordered the chirashi don like I usually do to guage a place, but I've had it here before, I just wanted to see how Yoshi did it.  He kept the chirashi don true to the original incarnation, but I think there were a few new items that weren't there before.  The chirashi don came with the standard salmon, tuna, ebi, tobiko, and tamago but also toro, hotate and ika.  The rice was laced with sushi vinegar and the ratio was perfect.

Ika

Hotate

Toro

Salmon

Tobiko

Yoshi also introduced a special menu with seasonal foods.  On a hot summer day, Hiyashi Chuuka is the perfect dish - cold ramen noodles, sesame dressing, cucumber, egg, ham and grilled chicken.

I can't get enough of the karaage at Oyasato  This time, I just ordered the karaage on the side, but you can order a karaage meal, which is inexpensive, tasty and filling.

Bento Box A looks pretty simple, but the items were actually really, really good.  The teriyaki chicken at Oyasato is out of this world, just like the karaage.  And yes, the gyoza that come in the bento box are deep-fried, and I usually cringe at deep-fried gyoza, but the fillings on these ones are really, really good.  The dressing for the salad is house-made and so is the teriyaki sauce, along with a lot of other things at Oyasato.

I'm a sushi guy, and the sushi at Oyasato is really good.  It's fresh, the proportions are good, and well put together, but where Oyasato really shines is the cooked food.  They're not known as a yoshoku-style restaurant, but they should be.  The Hambagu meal and the Karaage meal are one of my favorite menu items here, and there's also a good curry dish too.  I've got some older pictures posted on Urban Spoon, but I'll go back to Oyasato one of these days and take some updated pictures of these items.  

Looking forward to my next visit.