Restaurant: Aikawa
Restaurant type: Japanese, sushi
Prices: $4.50-$23 entrées, $10-$23 mains, $3-$10 desserts, wine bottles starting at $40
Date: Sunday February 9th 2020
Table of: 2
My favorite dish: Queen of the sea

Last month, I had the pleasure of being invited to try Aikawa as their guest! Aikawa is a Japanese restaurant located in the West Island (where I’m originally from) in a small strip mall just off of Boulevard des Sources and Brunswick Boulevard (across the street from the Guzzo, North side). Aikawa serves many different types of sushi rolls, including some very creative creations, with all of your favorite ingredients: salmon, tuna, lobster, shrimps and many more. They also serve Japanese dishes, like: teriyaki,  tempura, sashimi, gyozas and more. Here are the dishes and drinks we had the pleasure of trying:

• Ebi gyoza: Japanese dumplings filled with shrimp, ground chicken and shallots
• Grilled calamari: whole grilled calamari served with a tangy sauce
• Saké Royal: Atlantic salmon sashimi
• Lobster avocado tartare: spicy lobster tartare served in half avocado
• Venus roll: a light tempura roll with spicy salmon, avocado, tobiko, shiso leaf, fried onions and carrots
• Besame Mucho: spicy tuna, tempura, cooked shrimps and avocado rolled in a soya bean leaf
• Jade: fresh salmon and tuna sashimi rolled in seaweed, slightly breaded with tempura, topped with tobiko
• Queen of the sea: tempura lobster, cucumber strips, avocado, tobiko and spicy sauce
• Snowball: deep fried ice cream
• Glass of White Zinfandel, Robert Mondavi, California 
• Lychee martini
• Green tea

Overall, we enjoyed a great meal at Aikawa and my mom really loved it (she said it was the best sushis she’s ever eaten! – my dad also very much enjoyed the leftovers we brought to him). My favorite was the Queen of the sea sushi roll, because it had lobster in it (I love lobster). The lobster was covered in tempura batter and fried which was very good and overall, it was just a great sushi roll where you could really taste lobster; loved it.  Everything else was very good too. All of the sushi rolls were very fresh and tasty and I purposely chose rolls that put a spotlight on the fish/seafood as that’s my favorite part of sushi.

I really enjoyed the grilled calamari too, as it was nicely cooked and had that great grill taste to it. The gyoza were good but could have used more pan-frying to my taste. Ending the dinner with a nice big (snow) ball of fried ice cream was perfect; my mom had never had fried ice cream before and she loved it.

If you’re in the West Island and looking for a good Japanese restaurant with out-of-the-box sushi rolls, you’ll love the abundant choices and options at Aikawa. They also do take-out and deliveries in a good amount of West Island cities, so that’s always key when you feel like having a sushi dinner at home (you can also pick up for take-out at the resto itself). Thanks for having us Aikawa!

*This restaurant post does not contain my usual restaurant review criteria of restaurants, as this is a sponsored post where I was invited to the restaurant as a guest.

*All photos and comments are mine