Shiso Tree Cafe has been on my list of places to visit for the longest time ever. Since I am always out downtown, I rarely have a chance to eat at a non-Chinese restaurant when I am up town...until now! And the food here did not disappoint!
As a Japanese-fusion restaurant, Shiso Tree Cafe specializes in Japanese-inspired pastas. You won't be able to see the store front off the street, as it is located inside a little plaza on Steeles. It looks pretty tiny on the outside, but it does have a number of tables inside.
We came here on a Saturday evening, and I am really glad we made reservations. It was packed with multiple parties lining up.
We started off with a simple salad (greens and Shiso's wafu dressing) and Sapporo.
For starters, we ordered a side of Nori Fries (fries tossed with homemade wafu dressing & Japanese seaweed). I personally love seaweed fries, but these fries had a little too much dressing on them. The fries were rather sticky and although there was a lot of seaweed, I mainly tasted the wafu dressing.
Another appetizer we ordered was the Smoked Salmon Wafu Salad (a house salad with smoked salmon, ikura (salmon roe), caviar, and homemade garlic croutons). This was so good!! There was a good portion of smoked salmon and a combination of all the salad ingredients was delicious.
Before we even finished our starters, our pastas arrived!
I ordered the Unagi-Don pasta (cream teriyaki sauce and shimeji mushrooms with barbecued eel, garnished with nori and shiso). I love unagi (actually, I really liked all the ingredients of this pasta) so this was so so good! Although they did not give you a lot of unagi, everything else made up for it.
D ordered the Bolognese pasta (meat sauce with a combination of beef and pork, finished with reduced red wine and beef jus), obviously. He finished eating all of this within minutes!
Overall, we both enjoyed our meal here. Although the restaurant was packed, it wasn't too loud and we weren't rushed to finish our meal. The service was good, and our pastas were delicious. We were both very full after and couldn't even order dessert. I have heard a lot about their okonomiyaki fries and cannot wait to come back and try that!
