Edo at the Hilton

Edo Japanese Restaurant is a popular restaurant throughout the city of Toronto however there is one more hidden inside the Hilton Hotel up in the heart of Markham.  For this particular evening, we decided to go with their 5-course tasting menu.  There was a deal on one of the Groupon sites and myself, my wife and a couple of our friends decided to take advantage of it.

The five course tasting menu consists of basically 2 starters,  2 entrees and 1 dessert that one could choose from. I pretty much went with an all seafood and fish course this particular evening while my friends went with some meat and sushi.

The first dish to arrive at the table was the Seafood Sunomomo.  It was certainly a very interesting starter to have and one where props definitely should be given to the chef for giving out such a unique dish.   The scallop and shrimp were placed on top of small amount of seaweed and glass noodles.  There were no additives or marination to the seafood and all the taste for the most part came from the vinaigrette sauce.  The seafood tasted fresh but because the vinaigrette was at the bottom of the shooter separated by the glass noodles, there was actually no mixture of the two of them.  It wasn't bad but personally if the shooter was chilled, I think it would have much more tastier and much more amazing.

Seafood Sunomomo

Next to arrive at the table was the Chawan Mushi.  The bisque, albeit a small one, contained a lot of ingredients in it including lobster, egg custard in a tarragon, black peppers, mushrooms and truffle quail.  Despite the numerous ingredients in this dish, the only thing one could taste were a large bits of black peppers in it.  One could not really enjoy or taste the beauty of all the exotic ingredients in it as the black pepper simply overwhelmed the entire dish. It was somewhat disappointing as it looked liked a surefire winner.  All one could taste was the black pepper in the bisque and that was it. 

Chawan Mushi

From here one could order either a Nigiri Moriawase or the Black Dragon Roll.  Scanning the two I decided to go with the Moriawase.  There were nine pieces to the Black Dragon Roll while the Moriawase only contained 5 pieces however the quality of the fish in the Moriawase was a bit better.  My dish contained tiger tuna, hamachi, salmon nanami, botan ebi and wakame nigiri. 

Black Dragon Roll

The head waiter said the beauty of this dish was not in the fish itself but in the sauce.  For the tiger tuna, there was a balsamic sauce that went with it.  I think it was the first time I had any sushi with balsamic sauce so it sure was unique and funky.  Not too sure if I liked it or not as it seemed to be quite sour to me.  The salmon had a dynamite sauce which was actually about the same as the sauce in a spicy salmon roll.  To me, there was nothing really unique about it at all.  I believe the hamachi had some unagi sauce to it which made it a little interesting but that was pretty much about it.  The rest of the dish was as is and had no special uniqueness to it.  I was told the eel in the Black Dragon Roll was pretty good and the eel in it was pretty fresh and tasty.

Nigiri Moriawase

For the second starter one could have chosen the Miso Alaska Black Cod which was what I went with or with the Kobe Sliders.  There were three pieces of sliders on top of a crispy rice patty.  It certainly looked filling.  I had a small piece of the kobe sliders and found it to be a little chewy.  However it did seem to be quite filling as my friend was quite full afterwards. 

Kobe Sliders

The Miso Alaska Black Cod was my favorite for the evening.  The cod was perfectly seared and tasted absolutely amazing.  It was marinated with what appeared to be a little butter and was very easy to cut and to swallow.  There were a few pieces of vegetables that came with the fish that completed the dish.  The dish was more or less perfect when it came to the taste of it all however one could not but feel a little bit cheated seeing how much one got for the kobe sliders and how much was in the black cod plate.  

The desserts arrived last and my daughter who was with us got a green tea mochi.  The rest of us at the table got the Green Tea Panna Cotta.  The Panna Cotta was pretty smooth and had its green tea flavor to it.  It tasted as advertised.  The only thing we all remembered was that the mochi served to my daughter was still pretty frozen and very difficult to bite into and this were the adults that I'm talking about. 

Green Tea Mochi

Green Tea Panna Cotta

It was a satisfactory however with all tasting menus, a snack or two is certainly need afterwards.  The price was $72 per couple with the Groupon Ticket.  Oddly we were told on the phone that the place was packed and that every table was reserved however when we got there, all we saw were a lot of "Reserved" plates on the table and only one-quarter of the restaurant being filled.  The dish that stood out the most was the black cod.  Everything else seemed to be ordinary for me which I thought was disappointing.  Overall I give it a 3.5 out of 5.

Edo at the Hilton
8500 Warden Avenue
Markham, Ontario

647-557-8837