Last night, Akemi and I attended Affinity Fish‘s Inaugural Fish Night, an evening dedicated to spotlighting local seafood, from lake to table.

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Akemi, all dressed up and ready to go!

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It’s a two-person show!  Matt Taylor enlightens the crowd while Jon Klip preps the next dish.

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We started with Yellow Perch with Pickles, Akemi’s favorite dish of the night.  The pickles are made with locally-sourced crab-marinated ramps.

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Cured Chinook Salon and Burbot Liver on Toast.  And this was probably my favorite dish of the night.

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Misozuke Tomato, Tosazu,, Pickerel Karasumi.  We got little wooden spoons for this one.  The chopsticks just weren’t cutting it.  All of the beautiful serving plates are from Jon’s personal collection, amassed from his days in Kyoto.

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Dry Aged Lake Huron Salmon, Taken.  Crispy skin and a medium-rare cook to the fish.  A perfect textural combo.

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On to the nigiri portion of the night.  First up, Pickerel Irizake.  The best preparation I’ve ever had of a fish I find unbearably bony.

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Yellow Perch Amazu.  My sole quibble with the nigiri was the rice which I thought needed to be a little firmer and only required half the amount of black vinegar.

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Whitefish Bozushi.  This one especially reminded me of my time in Japan.

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Brown Trout Warakunsei.  My favorite nigiri – delightfully smoky.

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Burbot Ni.  The Burbot liver was described as similar to ankimo, the lion fish liver popular and many high-end Japanese restaurants.  Texturally, I agree, but thought it actually tasted closer to foie gras.

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Ling Kimo.  Fantastic.

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Everything Bagel Temaki.  This one was fun and included a touch of cream cheese and an Everything Bagel seasoning with the delicious smoked brown trout.

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Aka-dashi.  A wonderful red miso soup to end our meal.

Well, not quite.  After almost three dessert-free weeks, I indulged – Miso Cream Cheese Tart and Wild Blueberries.

To be honest though, it was so light on sugar that I felt I hadn’t really fallen off the wagon at all.

But a brief stopover on the way home rectified that…

No, I did not want to wait until I got home.

A fantastic meal.  Looking forward to the next one!

Affinity Fish

1581 Dundas Street West, Toronto

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4 thoughts on “September 3, 2022: Inaugural Fish Night at Affinity Fish!

  1. The presentation of those dishes is beautiful. That is half the sell. And nothing like having Akemi there all dressed up to give the place a touch of class and authenticity! Glad you got dessert(s)!

    Thanks for sharing!

  2. Hi Joe hope you’re well? Joe I’m well off totally off topic here, but I’m just so damn excited that I found these. I just found online a series of official MGM e-comics on SGU continuing on from the last episode where everyone bar Eli went into the status pods. Fantastic find & read, I wonder how close it is to where you guys were going with series 3? If you would be up for it and if it’s allowed I could upload them to GDrive and share them if anyone was interested. Oh I really miss Stargate. Cheers Steve

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