Miso
14917 Stony Plain Rd. (Jasper Gates) 780-443-6668

Woe betide the slackass diner who, constitutionally incapable of foresight, ventures through the city’s western loin of a wintry Saturday evening without a reservation and expects to sit down in the first restaurant he drifts into and actually eat. The least such a benighted character should do is spend half an hour online charting a course of possible destinations so there’s a Plan B (and C and D) when they encounter crowded foyer after crowded foyer.

Luckily the pocket between 149th and 142nd Streets south of Stony Plain Road is well-supplied with dining out opportunities. Unluckily we struck out at all of them: three Italian places and one high-end burger joint. Dispirited yet hungry, we pushed west through Jasper Place’s storied Gate and into a parking lot rimmed by big grocery and drug stores and a shitload of restaurants. Seriously, a shitload. The always delightful Tropika plies its trade there, someone claims to be offering the Best Donairs, and there’s that sad buffet restaurant in front of which a horrifying broad-daylight murder was committed a couple of miserable winters ago. Our imaginations were momentarily captured by a Japanese storefront noodle house — just a few doors down from a Vietnamese noodle house — but when we noticed the banner under their canopy with just the word “Express” on it we both conjured visions of syrupy deep-fried teriyaki, viscous rice and supermarket-quality sushi. I don’t know this is what they in fact serve, but we were no longer in the mood to find out, if we ever had been.

A safer bet sat across the parking lot in the squat, amiable premises of Miso, a smallish sushi emporium that’s been doing its thing somewhat unobtrusively there for the better part of a decade, if my spotty memory is anything to go by. As we walked through the door, I couldn’t help myself but utter, “They need us!” For the first time that night, I looked across a field of mostly empty booths and tables.
The menu, a digital replica of which can be seen at misojapanesecuisine.ca, put me in mind of the reliable Kyoto sushi dynasty that’s propagated about town like shiitake in terms of ranges both gustatory and monetary. The only thing for it was to test Miso on the fundamentals of what I think is a basic-but-rounded sushi-centric meal.

For starters, a small beef tataki ($8.95) to stimulate the digestion chased by a dose of roughage, the three-dollar green salad you find on just about every sushi restaurant menu. Then the main attraction: salmon and toro sushi, chop chop (all $4.45 per two-piece order) and a serving of rainbow maki ($8.50).

The food started appearing very shortly after we ordered and came at a tempo completely attuned to our somewhat voracious demeanor — when got back in  the car to go home, my co-diner noted less than an hour had passed since our arrival. The beef tataki was an excellent example of the form — thin, blue-rare slices of marbled beef in a pool of citrusy ponzu sauce and topped with sliced green and white onion, shreds of reconstituted  seaweed (wakame) and grated daikon mixed with red pepper — and the small order the perfect for two.

Next came the salads, lightly dressed and composed to give you exactly three dollars worth, again perfect for the kind of meal we were looking to have: not too much of anything. But looking across the big wooden block laden with our sushi, I wondered if we’d gone overboard. There was plenty of ginger and wasabi too — can’t abide a sushi place that’s begrudging with the condiments.

The sushi itself was more than adequate, especially the pearly pink scalloped slabs of tuna belly garnished with green onion slices. The chop chop — pockets of nori filled with rice and a mound of chopped scallop mixed with mayo and fish roe — was likewise creamy and succulent. I’m easily put off by mediocre chop chop (it should never taste fishy) and Miso’s version made me glad I’d given it a shot. My co-diner found the filling of the rainbow maki, the ubiquitous inside-out rice roll wrapped with slices of salmon, snapper, avocado and cooked shrimp around a core of tempura bits and roe, too grainy as the tempura bits were particularly bitty. I was fine with it because I really eat it for the fish, and for the way it sponges up the stingingly strong wasabi-soya concoction I mix in the little tray in front of me.

Moments after we ate the last bite, our bill and the requisite chocolate-filled mint candies were on the table between us. It was the fastest decent-quality sushi meal I think I’ve ever had. Which goes to show there’s no reason to go tainting your innards with fast-food knock-offs when you can often get lovingly-prepared examples of the real thing somewhere nearby.