Pazzo Pazzo (Downtown)

LKung's Thoughts
They are located close downtown by city hall...
They had a really nice restaurant and during the lunch hour they are just packed!!! The food takes a little long but well worth it with their portioning! Me and Josie shared a pasta an salad combo and it was super filling, in fact we actually had half of the salad left and the pasta left... Some things I have to say is that it was super good for calamari (like heck super amazing - must try), we had the aribiatta (praying I spell this right) but it had peppers in it... We had the chicken Pazzo salad I think that's what it is called but it was very garlic overdose so it was tough to eat! Omg their Italian sodas are worth a try as well!

My ratings for the day...
Cleanliness - 4 (they were very busy and they had some stuff on the floor)
Service - 4 (very lovely waitress and very nice but food took a while but worth it, understandable since they were busy, only 1 server I think)
Food - 4
Pricing - 4
Drinks - 3.75 (peach Italian soda but it was good mmmmmmmm..... )


JosieNg's Thoughts
This is a true Italian Restaurant. Very nice restaurant with really nice people. Service was a little slow but all in all it was a good time. So me and LKung shared an appetizer which was the calamari. Calamari was crispy and delicious. They also give you two dipping sauces for the calamari, a spicy tomato sauce and a garlic aioli sauce. Then we had the Arrabiatta pasta which was a penne pasta with garlic, jalapeno peppers, Parmesan cheese, and tomato sauce. Pasta was so worth it. They give you such huge portions you wouldn't be able to finish it yourself. Oh and we also had a Pazzo salad. The salad had a creamy garlic dressing but it was a little intense. The raw garlic in the dressing really came out and all you can taste was the garlic. The salad was also supposed to have seasoned strips of chicken but at the end we realized that there was no chicken in our salad. We also had Italian Sodas. I had the strawberry Italian soda and it was alright.

My Ratings!
Cleanliness - 4 (There was only one server/waitress)
Service - 3.5 (It was a pretty long wait for everything but then again there was only one waitress)
Food - 4
Drinks - 3 (Couldn''t taste the strawberry flavor)
Pricing - 4 (It was around $40 for the both of us)

Arrabiatta

 

Pazzo Salad

Italian Sodas

Calamari

Wasabi sushi (Southside)

Lkung's thoughts
So seriously in Edmonton we have a lot of japanese restaurants but ones that stand out are hard to find. This place totally tops the charts. Me and Josie went to eat lunch there today and let me tell you it was magnificent... I had a lunch bento with sushi combo number three and it was so good. The bento consisted of the normal - miso soup, rice, salad, tempura, sushi and chicken. To tell you the truth this would be the best $13.50 I have ever spent. They don't allow substitutions but it was super filling like super! But it was super good! Like the tempura was soft on the inside and then crispy on the outside! This restaurant is super authentic too like they do it Japanese style! Sushi had a small amount of wasabi in each one which is not expected but definitely how the Japanese eat it! The sushi stayed together so well yet so soft And the fish was good too! Fresh and thick sliced appropriately! Of course the California rolls and avocado which I a favorite was like outstanding but the only thing about this restaurant is that it is only open for lunch on Wednesday to Friday...
The restaurant was small but clean and they had so nice yet quiet waiters but they were real nice! It's a nice restaurant that I would definitely go back for like holy smokes so good!

Here are my ratings...
Cleanliness - 4 (I didn't check out the bathrooms)
Service - 4.5 (quiet waiter but he was real nice)
Food - 5 (must try!!! You are missing out)
Drinks - n\a (only had water)
Pricing - 4 (our specials were super good priced but sashimi wise it was high)

So for my bill it was $13.50 for the bento and then $10.50 for the sushi combo...

Let's pass it over to Josie! :)


JosieNg's thoughts
So I love sushi. I can eat sushi everyday if i could. This is by far the best Japanese restaurant that I have been to in Edmonton.  So Lkung and I have been wanting to try this place out for a while now and decided to go their for lunch today.
When you first step into this restaurant its pretty tiny but cozy like. Everyone there seemed friendly enough especially our waiter. The food also came out pretty fast.
So, I had the lunch bento which includes the miso soup, avocado maki (consistes of 6 pieces) and a California cone. In all honesty, I don't really like drinking miso soup but the miso soup that i had at Wasabi was delicious. Everything in the  bento tasted so good. The chicken teriyaki was crisp and the sauce was perfect. The tempura was crispy and cooked perfectly. The avocado maki that i had tasted so fresh and was just amazing. The California roll had like a burst of flavor then you first bite into it. And lastly the California cone looked beautiful, it was amazing. This was the best I've ever had.4
For my portion of the bill it was $13.50 for the lunch bento,$3.50 for the avocado maki, and $4.50 for the California cone.

And my ratings!
Cleaniliness - 4.5
Service - 5
Food - 5 (Definitely my go to place for sushi)
Drinks - 5 (Only had water)
Pricing - 4.5

Lunch Bento with rice and Miso soup

California Cone and Avocado Maki

Lunch Bento

Sushi Combo #3

Miso Soup

Tutti Frutti (Whyte Ave)

Lkung's experience...
Tutti Frutti Whyte Ave is like a pretty cool place to be actually. This has become one places that we always go to as a hang out...
The service is simple and friendly and well its 0.49 cent per ounce I believe for toppings and yogurt. I personally tried the taro, lychee, passionfrui, green tea, mango, coconut and chocolate and I do enjoy it. The toppings can be fruits or some kind of candy or toppings like crushed oreo cookies.. Its quite enjoyable...
Usually they have two sizes and I always end up with the small size one and i fill it quite decently so price wise it was about five dollars but definitely a must try...

Cleaniness... 5
Food/Yogurt - 5
Service - 4 (there isn't much interaction but I've had super friendly counter people to people that just stand there and do nothing and doesn't even greet you so...)
Pricing - 4

JosieNg's Critique
I love frozen yogurt. Twisted Yogurt, YogenFruz, Kiwi Kiss, Tutti Frutti....You name it, I've been there.  My first time trying tutti frutti was just a couple weeks ago. This is by dar the yummiest yogurt place that I've been to in Edmonton. The flavors that they have are really good. Flavors like lychee, taro, almond, green tea, red velvet (my favorite), death by chocolate, coconut, and mango. I definitely recommend rying this yogurt place out.

Cleanliness - 5
Service - 3 (The first time i went to Tutti Frutti, the boy that was working there wasn't very friendly)
Food - 5
Drinks - No drinks :)
Pricing - 4.5

Oranj Sushi Bar (West Edmonton Mall)

Lkung and I went to this oh-so-fabulous Oranj Sushi Bar yesterday night. This Japanese restaurant had just been opened for a couple of weeks now and we thought that it would be a nice place to have dinner.

Josieng's Critique

So I thought that this restaurant would be so tasty and so wonderful so I convinced Lkung to eat there. Service was good...we got seated and browsed through the menu. Prices there were decent and I thought to myself 'I picked a good ass restaurant.' So we ordered and did not have to wait very long for the food to arrive which was fantastic!

So I got my California Cone and it looked really tasty and couldn't wait to eat it. As i took my first bite....I couldn't quite make out the taste of this cone. The crab meat was rubbery and the mayo had a funky taste to it.

The second thing that came to the table was my avocado maki. They were alright...nothing too exciting.

The last and final thing that I had at this restaurant was their vegetable tempura. The tempura was disgusting. It was the greasiest tempura I have ever eaten in my life. Also, the vegetables were undercooked and some of the vegetables had a metal taste to them.

The worst part of this experience were the edamame beans that i tried off of lkung's bento...It was horrible. I don't know where they keep their vegetables but where ever they are, it is making their veggies taste funny.

So all in all here are my ratings:

Cleanliness - 5

Service - 5

Food - 0

Drinks - 5? (I only had water)

Pricing - 4

Lkung's critique...

So I guess I should say that we were actually at Wem (short form of west edmonton mall) a couple weeks ago and then we say the sign so we were super excited to have a sushi place right into Wem as a dining restaurant...

To tell you the very truth I really had some high standards for this restaurant... It was placed on Bourbon Street along with many good restaurants like The Red Piano and Delux Burger Bar... so expectations were super high...

Lets start from the beginning. Upon approaching the hostess, she was super friendly and definitely a real Japanese. Getting seated with the menus was fantastic. The service from the waitress was fast to get us drinks and recognize what we wanted... (We arrived at 8pm-ish to the restaurant)

So lets start with my order which was a sushi chef bento box with sashimi (raw fish slices) and one chop chop sushi as well as a fresh oyster. The waitress came back to me and told me that there was no more fresh oysters so i didn't get to try it.

Bento box at this restaurant consisted of a salad, chicken teriyaki, rice, tempura, edamame, miso soup and of course the sashimi.

The generic items really didn't make it any more special, according to my taste buds the miso soup was lacking some flavour or simply salt hahaha... chicken teriyaki was slightly undercooked and usually most restaurants want it to be slightly crunchy and well it wasn't like that... I'm really not sure if it was the time of the day that we like walked into the restaurant but the rice and edamame was quite cold... And then tempura was well undercooked may be a couple description of it... Some of the vegetables haven't been in the oil for long enough... Biting into the tempura was a very hard battered exterior and then vegetables were hard... Squash for example usually has a sweet taste and is slightly mushy but this was not sweet, carrot one was just very hard, broccoli was like the most perfect one, shrimp was good too, and the yam was again quite hard. Also, for some odd reason edamame tasted like metal... a slight metal aftertaste and was quite cold...

Sashimi which is a determining factor of a good Japanese restaurant is very important because fresh fish is what sells Japanese cuisine off... Its basically a very important factor - I had tuna, salmon and scallop sashimi and well it wasn't fresh... I do understand that I live in Edmonton 53 degrees north latitude with no bodies of water that contain eatable fish but yea, it was just like eating a piece of not sure what but raw object...

Overall, I guess the restaurant tried but there are several factors that may have influenced it... Overall, the sushi is quite good. I saw many people ordering sushi and they were satisfied with their visits so perhaps try the sushi out but the rest... I'm not so sure...

So here are my ratings...
Cleaniness - 5
Service - 4
Food - 2
Drinks - N/A since I only had Water...
Pricing - 3.5

Oh yea... the portioning of the food was quite well actually and pricing was decent too...
For all the items described above the bill was $47.78... so totally not bad at all...

Bento Box with Teriyaki Chicken

California Cone

Avocado Maki

Tempura

How to understand us.

So here is what we will be doing with this blog.

Our blog is all about giving you guys our views of a variety of restaurants that we have eaten. So essentially we will be reviewing restaurants and giving you an idea of what to expect :)

This is how we will be critiquing the restaurants:
Service
Cleanliness
Food
Drinks
Pricing

These will all be rated out of 5.
Food and drinks
0 - Sickening (Made me sick)
1 - Nauseating (We ate it, and wanted to spit it out)
2 - Eatable (We could handle the tastes)
3 - Average (The food was alright, not spectacular)
4 - Good (I would come back again)
5 - Excellent (Knocked my socks off)

The general scale that will be used for other qualities...
1- Major improvement necessary
2 - Improvement necessary
3 - Generally satisfactory
4 - Good
5 - Excellent

A Little About Us =)

Well anyways so this little critic blog is run by two of us... and lets break it down for you to understand why we totally love doing this...
First, we like love to eat... hahaha that is because we go out all the time... Yep thats right we are out eating all the time... hahah practically everyday... This is lkung and let me pass this on to josieng to clarify ourselves =)

Hey guys! I hope you liked lkung's little intro that is 'a little about us'. So as you have already read...lkung and I LOVE eating :) We have actually eaten out almost everyday since the beginning of September. So instead of just being fatties like we are now, we decided to put our love for food into good use.

We are specifically critiquing Edmonton restaurants :) As we are from Edmonton.