TorontoLifestyle.com - Blowfish Restaurant Review

The King West strip needs another trendy resto-lounge like a fish needs a typewriter. Then again, there's always room for more "Are-You-Hot?" buff boys and bottle-blondes. But if you think Blowfish is just another hotspot for Toronto's beautiful people, you're wrong. For starters, the menu effortlessly fuses traditional Japanese ingredients with classical French and pan-Asian influences. For another, the room is considerably more intimate than its tony competitors.

Housed in a spiffed-up Bank of Toronto building dating back about 70 years, Blowfish owes its refinement to a restored elegance that honours its historic setting. Designer Johnson Chou's first restaurant commission incorporates de rigueur minimalism with seamless integration of design details. Totally today walnut paneling and stainless steel echo throughout, while three crystal chandeliers are a showstopper of style that tastefully harken back to yesteryear. The only design glitch is an incongruously clunky floor-to-ceiling metal curtain that separates the bar from the dining area. Memo to Chou: Lose the Mad Max mesh and replace it with something more in keeping with grandeur like a wall of floating crystal beads, perhaps. The room's subtlety and sophistication is maintained even when it morphs, after 11, into a lounge. Serious diners might want to arrive early to enjoy chef G.Q. Pan's fine food and give it the attention it deserves before all eyes are on the DJ. Pan, most recently executive chef for the EDO group of eateries, has worked at many other Japanese food haunts over the years, including the now-defunct Furosato, Sagaro, Tenitsi and Miro. Long done they are, but his firm hand on technique is alive and well as he continues to coax intriguing flavours out of first-rate ingredients. On the downside, his sauces can be clumsy and his presentation clichéd. Full marks, though, for a bowl of complimentary edamame (soybeans), served warm and generously salted to bring out their flavour. Full marks, too, for the menu, a design statement on two pieces of acetate. Pan shows his mettle early on with a trio of stellar maki rolls, building each with geometric precision. He stuffs marinated tuna, avocado, cucumber and fragrant shiso leaf into a roll ($10), before enveloping it in a razor-thin tempura batter only briefly deep fried. In another creation that's as stunning to the eye as it is on the palate, strips of raw salmon and mango ($12) mingle before being wrapped around rolls stuffed with avocado, and orange and black flying-fish roe -- a sweetness match made in heaven. In a third triumph, raw tuna and salmon, along with cucumber, mango and avocado, make for a luscious combo ($13). But although sauces are drizzled with artisan skill, they're skimpy and at times stuck to the plate On the cooked side of things, Pan acquits himself marvelously. Sugar-sweet black cod ($18), delicate and flaky, couldn't be more satisfying, though a greasy tempura treatment sabotages the accompanying mound of baby spinach leaves. Seared cape scallops ($12) are wrapped in a thin piece of salmon, topped with wasabi-crab mayonnaise and baked. It's a clever cuisine construct, indeed. And if the mayo needs more wasabi heat, its richness adds just the right note of luxury. Even dishes that go by our table tempt. We swoon at the sight of a beef tenderloin beneath a teepee of deep fried somen noodles. Next time. And who would've thought that barbecued salmon skin would work so well in a mixed-green salad ($9)? Not only does it work, it soars, thanks to its crunchy texture and smoky flavour sharpened by a vinaigrette zapped with potent serrano pepper. Is there a more delicious way to eat heart-healthy Omega-3 fatty acids in Toronto? By contrast, a platter ($10) of overcooked beef, scallop, shrimp and onion skewers in teriyaki is forgettable. Some equally forgettable sauces undermine a couple of otherwise respectable cold dishes. In one, thin slices of tender beef carpaccio ($14) are draped on a ring of julienned sweet onion and sit in a pool of too-thick, too-sweet, ponzu detonated with habanero pepper. In the other, slices of briefly poached, ruby-red tuna ($18) are layered with crisp, fresh wontons that tower on the plate. But its sickly sweet, hoisin-like dressing recalls the worst excesses of President's Choice "Memories of" series. Things pick up with electric-green, wok-tossed baby bok choy ($3) that strikes the perfect tender/crisp blance -- but it's in desperate need of promised garlic or it remains just a bland palate cleanser. If the meal 'til now has been satisfying, desserts are nothing short of a revelation. Indeed, the selection of house-made sweets is so superior to the ubiquitous canned lychee fruit or green tea ice cream norm that we want to shout it from the rooftops. First, a fan of ripe mango, topped with a shard of properly bitter caramelized sugar ($8), comes perched on a wedge of moist spice cake and garnished with a scimitar-shaped pool of intense mango coulis. Fluke? Nope, because the second offering is even more spectacular: a chocolate-raspberry parfait ($8). More of a mousse, really, its "wow" factor comes via a topping of freshly whipped cream, and toasted and shaved coconut, whose fragrant richness works wonders. A scoop of lychee sorbet ($1.50) plumbs the very essence of that tropical fruit, though a ginger ice cream ($2) is heinously bland. Being able to sail through the sink-or-swim waters of our eater-tainment district with few waves is a rare accomplishment so early on. Blowfish seems to have everything in place, including a pleasant waitstaff who make up in enthusiasm what they lack in polish and menu smarts. But that's the fault of management for not providing more server training, especially when dealing with such a sophisticated menu, chock full of unfamiliar ingredients. To be sure, Blowfish is as spiffy and up-to-the-nanosecond cool as its trendy neighbours -- but not all of them have seamlessly fused a posh foodie find with a lucrative lounge crowd.