Izumi Sushi Yokozuna - Massive rolls and Daily Specials
The porridge is: Piping Hot! Daily specials, gigantic rolls, great service… a must for those who love fusion rolls!
Yokuzuna literally means “horizontal rope” and refers to the highest rank in sumo. Izumi is a common name for cities in Japan. In fact, there was an Izumi city right in Kagoshima prefecture where I lived for 3 years. Ah, good old memories.
My parents are usually deathly scared of raw fish and insist on pan-searing all the sushi we buy from T&T so I was shocked when they came back raving about Izumi Sushi Yokozuna. I knew I had to check it out for myself.
We live in the NW so Izumi was quite a drive but we decided to go for dinner in celebration of my parents’ 28th wedding anniversary. We arrived around 6pm and there were a few tables already seated. The daily special was $1 sushi: salmon, tuna, jellyfish, masago, beef tataki, tamago.. . I was surprised at the amount of items available! (They have specials every day ranging from 20% off everything on Tuesdays to $10 off boats on Sat/Sun.)
The decor was simple and warm. My parents wanted to sit in the booths but our server kindly observed that it might be too crowded with 5 people.
Beef Udon $10.95
Helen picked this dish. It was big enough to serve 5 regular rice bowls of noodles. I hesitated when the server asked who ordered the udon and another server quickly came by to ask if we were sharing. He immediately brought out extra bowls and spoons. I thought this dish was decent but Helen LOVED it so much she continued talking about it for 10 minutes after it was gone.
Vegetable Gyoza 8pcs. $7.95
I was really excited when I saw green gyoza but these were not that special. I’ve had better vegetable gyoza from T&T Supermarket’s frozen section. The fillings in these were a bit too “mushy” for my taste… when everything tastes like it’s been blended.
Assorted Nigiri Sushi $1 each (Monday Special)
Okay so we might have gone a bit overboard. I really liked the fish to rice ratio here. Notice how all the fish “drape” over the rice? The salmon was good and cut well too. I really can’t stand when I can’t bite through sashimi because of bad knife work. The surf clam sushi was a bit on the smaller side but nice and chewy. I didn’t try all of these but everybody seemed to like them.
Beef Tataki Sushi $1.00 each (Monday Special)
I didn’t try any of these but there were no complaints. I assumed they were good because they had garlic flakes. (More on why that is later…)
Cherry Blossom Roll 10 pcs. Regular $16.95
This is when things started to get crazy. 17 dollars for a special roll sounds expensive right? Well, we all STARED when these came out. These rolls are MASSIVE. I would say they were about 4cm across! Think Towa, but bigger. This roll had avocado, salmon, tuna and seaweed. It wasn’t just a sprinkling of seaweed, it was a LOT. Good thing it was delicious. I think the fillings in this roll could easily make up three regular sized rolls. Fish was good quality as well, not super fresh but not too bad either.
Crazy Buster Roll 10 pcs. Regular $15.95
The Crazy Buster Roll was even BIGGER than the Cherry Blossom Roll. I’m sorry for all the caps but it is the only way I can express how huge these rolls were. Look at the napkins for comparison!
Huge slabs of fish in every roll. No cheaping out on the ends or using random pieces of fish here. This was tempura salmon and tuna with white tuna, spicy sauce, onion flakes and garlic flakes. FINALLY, a spicy roll that is actually spicy! (Sorry, Big Catch, I still love you.) This roll had a sweet yet spicy tang to it that will definitely appeal to all spicy tuna/salmon lovers! The garlic flakes were divine. This was my favorite dish of the night.
I want to make a special note on how good the service was. Towards the end of our meal the restaurant had really started to fill up but our plates were quickly cleared, water was refilled, and a server promptly packed up our leftovers when asked. This was the first time I’ve seen soy sauce packages taped outside of the container. Felt a lot more sanitary!
We opened the container to find that they had separated our rolls from the nigiri. My mom thought this was unnecessary until I pointed out that one side was spicy while the other was not. They also put in some ginger and wasabi. As we left the restaurant, one of our servers(who was not even given credit on our bill) told us “thank you very much” with genuine eye-contact. Big brownie points in my books.
As we walked away from the restaurant, a parked vehicle reminded us that, yes, EVERYTHING is big at Izumi Sushi Yokozona.
Izumi Sushi Yokozuna (on Macleod Trail)
10201 Southport Rd SW
(403) 252-7676
