Jeys and Tin: japanese

Shiso Tree Cafe

A couple of days ago I met up with friends for a get-together. We do this at least once a month to catch up with life and relieve our stress from our busy lives. We decided to go have dinner first before going for board games session. We went to Shiso Tree Cafe for dinner. It's a Japanese restaurant that serves Japanese style pasta (Wafu 和風) and many other type of pastas, food, and beverages. It's a fusion of Italian and Japanese style food. The restaurant atmosphere was quite nice and quiet. The servers were nice. The food in general was appetizing and delicious. Each pasta dish is served with salad and garlic bread. There was also a pasta set which included soup and a cake.

Unagi-Don - cream teriyaki and shimeji mushrooms with Japanese barbecued eel. Garnished with nori and shiso -$17

This pasta dish was very creamy. My friend called it a "very heavy meal" due to its creamy texture. It's what made it my favorite dish. If you like something creamy I would recommend this. I've tasted four pasta dishes, as we all shared a portion of our dishes to each of us in addition to our own dish. We asked for small plates so that we could easily distribute the Japanese poutine and share it. After we finished the Japanese poutine we used the same plate, filled it with a portion of our own dish as we passed the small plates around in a circle. That way when each of our small plates reach us we have three other pasta dishes to eat. It was a good way to taste the other dishes without having to go buy them. So far out of the four pasta dishes I've tried I liked the Unagi-Don, despite the fact that I do not like eating eel. For the record, I never tried the eel so I cannot say how it tasted. Moreover, my friend had no complaints in regards to that particular dish, so it's safe to say that it is quite good. I probably would buy this next time I come back to this restaurant.

Shrimp Okonomiyaki - Spaghetti sauteed with bacon, onions and garlic, dressed with shrimp, homemade steak sauce, Japanese mayo and bonito fish flakes - $14

This dish is one of my least favourite. It's not so bad but compared to the other 3 pasta dishes it's quite on the dry side. I like my pasta to be creamy. Other than that I think it's still quite delicious.

Napolitan - Japanese tomato sauce with sausage, bacon, onions, nori and shiso -$10

This pasta dish tasted like the Filipino spaghetti. It is sweet rather than sour, and the tomato sauce was also palatable.

Shiso Clam Vongole - White wine, olive oil, garlic, bacon, fresh Manila clams and shiso -$15

I ordered this dish. The shiso taste on this dish was very strong. This dish was very dry for me. It did have a lot of clams in it. So if you like clams, I recommend this dish. I chose this dish simply for the clams. However, it was my least favourite.

Japanese Poutine Fries - poutine garnished with nori and shiso.

This was my first time having Japanese poutine fries. Apparently, there are other places where you can get one. As per my friend, this was more creamy and very similar to a regular poutine but has an additional touch of shiso and nori. To me it was not salty and very creamy. It was very delicious. I would recommend for poutine lovers to try it out.

Overall I would go back to this place for many reasons. Firstly, it's located at J-town. Secondly, you can go dine at this cafe after shopping around the area in J-town, which is a fairly small plaza. Finally, the food was delicious.

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