Sushi Oyama – Three Times a Charm

It’s difficult for me to understand why I avoided Sushi Oyama for so long… and here we are on my third post for them already (see our last two visits here and here). Fresh, quality ingredients… good serving sizes… and an interesting setting – what more can you ask for?

Their Large Seafood Salad ($7.95) is a big bowl of with salmon, tuna, tai, and tako sashimi topped with a generous portion of masago. In addition to the crisp greens underneath, it also has vermicelli noodles in it. Very tasty but I notice that it was quite vinegary (from the dressing) at the bottom of the bowl.

Their version of Kaki Fry comes with 6 relatively small oysters that are lightly breaded, deep fried to a golden brown, and served on the shell with a sweet dipping sauce… for $4.90, it was actually a pretty good deal.

I didn’t really find anything bad with the Chicken Karaage (6 wings for $4.30) – in fact, it was pretty juicy when I bit into the wings. I just wish that their menu would specify that their karaage is chicken wings because I prefer my karaage made with boneless chicken.

Sushi Oyama makes some of the best donburies around so we ordered a Chicken Katsu Don (a steal at $8.75 for a large bowl).

Known for their keen sushi roll presentation skills, you must order some of their special rolls just to see these neat dishes… take a look at their Red Dragon Roll. Basically a dynamite roll that has been topped with salmon sashimi slices, masago, tobiko, and bonito flakes… they plating skills just takes this dish over the top.

Service can be a bit of hit-and-miss. We got a new server (or at least I hope she was a new server) who wasn’t really familiar with the menu and was a little awkward with bringing the dishes.

Some updated photos of another recent visit we had at Sushi Oyama:

Salmon Sashimi (9 pieces @ $9.45) – these are actually pretty thick slices of sashimi.

Again, the large Seafood Sashimi Salad

Their Red Roll has chopped scallop and cucumber inside with spicy tuna on top (8 pieces for $5.40).

I retract my previous comment about all of Sushi Oyama’s donburies. Their Chicken Katsu Don is wonderful but their Unagi Don was nothing more than a bowl of rice covered with unagi. There was a lot of rice, but none of the other things that makes their Chicken Katsu so great.

And a piece of advice… don’t bother with the desserts. We tried their Mud Pie but it was so frozen that we could barely dent it with our spoons. It reminded me a little bit of the frozen desserts that you find in the grocery store (but they never bothered to thaw it out).

Food: 4 / 5
Service: 3.5 / 5

5152 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC

www.sushioyama.ca