ottawa foodies

Just returned from Yellowknife, and beleive it or not, had some pretty tasty vietnamese food up in the arctic. Surely a 'popular' place on elgin could out-do a remote asian restaruant? Wrong!

Horrible, impersonal service. No eye contact, short unemotional banter etc.

Paid 11 somthing for a beef vermiccelli. There were a couple of things wrong with this. The spring rolls, were bad. They were not fresh. I'm not talking about "freshly rolled", rather these srpingrolls had been fried hours earlier and were sitting around. Oh, and they were overcooked too.. see picture*.

The sauce they included with the meal was waaay to sweet for my tastes.

The beef was of suspect quality, quite chewy with ligament-like parts in it.

No mint was included as advertisted, and the menu says the noodles should be cold and dry. Mine were warm and moist.

I managed to eat it, and it was ok, but its sad when a restaurnat can't do a good job with somthing as simple as vermicelli. I felt it was thrown together with no care.

Meh, you got your one and only chance. Not impressed.

I recently went for lunch at Green Tea with a friend. It is not my first choice for sushi..I think it is over-priced for the quality..and is generally only satisfying if you need to find something to fill up on at 4:30 am.

Anyhow, as my friend was eating her sushi rolls, and I my pho, we noticed 2 of the behind-counter employees crouch down...not long after we heard clipping sounds. Clipping sounds?!! I thought I was mistaken, but alas, no...the employees stood up from behind the counter and one actually continued to clip her nails in plain sight! They roll the sushi right there! If this is not a health-code violation then I don't know what is.

As if that wasn't enough, my friend pointed out another employee soon after wiping a soya sauce bottle with a used napkin! Needless to say we will not be returning, EVER! I wanted to warn those of you who may care about the environmental cleanliness of your food preparation. We are paying customers after all.

As with pretty much every other sushi place in Ottawa, I found the food overpriced at Green Tea. Spending $4 for cucumber rolls a bit steep. The quality of the food was what one would expect from a convenience food restaurant. (I put it in the same category as the shawarma places around town.) I've commented on specific foods below.

The service was pleasant and reasonably paced. They seem to do a good take out business.

Thought I'd drop in last night to have a bite since we wanted to try something new. All sushi rolls were very good, though, the tempura shrimp in the namesake roll could have been crunchier. The wakame peanut roll was awesome. Overall, a cool place to go after a long night of drinking (open 'til a ridiculous 5am, as others have already mentioned), or just for a quick bite to eat. The only other place that's been able to serve freshly made sushi that quickly to me was Teriyaki Plus.

really...the biggest draw for this place (for me) is that I can have sushi at midnight! (till 5AM!!! on weekends!)

that right there should do it.

Still, Green Tea is not in the same class as Genji which is around the corner or certain ones downtown. But it's decent and fresh, affordable and no frills. If the Ikea decor didn't tip you off already ;)

I love it, whether for my regular sushi fix or an alternative to a shwarma after the bars. life is good. :)

Food was good. I had the dumplings, shrimp tempura roll and vermicelli noodles with beef.

I felt a little like I was eating at an Ikea store though. the staff was really friendly.

I think I might stick with restaurant joy for my sit down sushi meal with friends, but if i'm looking for fast take home sushi, i'll go to Green Tea.

I'd been wanting to try this place ever since I first noticed it. The best part is that it's open until 5am on weekends.

The food isn't great but it *is* the only place on Elgin that serves Vietnamese Pho, Bubble Tea, and Sushi.

They accept only cash and debit (no credit cards).

Review: www.ottawaxpress.ca

ate here afew times
sorta tokyo young adultish place
had pho once, very nice broth
spring rolls were not bad but not great
the sushi was meh...
overpriced and quite bland
I ordered several spicy pieces and when I asked if they could make it spicier, the sushi chef held up a bottle of Tobasco and said he'd give me a side of it to make it as spicy as I wished
meh...I pulled my own dry roasted Thai chili powder out of my satchel and said "nevermind"

I much prefer Kochu down the road
albeit there is nothing in the way of seating

I enjoyed the sushi that I had, but it wasn't spectacular. I had the wakame rolls (very good) and the cucumber rolls (good).

My bf had the spicy salmon and another spicy fish roll. They were pretty much identical, and he said they were a bit large (both in the amount of the fish and rice) to be eaten in polite company. A couple of times, they almost exploded out of his mouth when he bit down. They were tasty, however.

Ugh, this place was not great, even if it is open late, I won't be going back. The sushi was tasteless, the rice not properly cooked, it just wasn't good sushi. Admittedly I fealt fine afterwards (which I cannot say about every sushi place in Ottawa) so I don't want to completely damn. Get a soup, much better.

The sushi rice was a bit on the sweet side but the Kamikaze roll was really good. Again, not something to drive across town for, but if you find yourself needing a hit of sushi after doing the cougar thing in the Elgin clubs then do give it a try! ;-)

I had a mango bubble tea and quite enjoyed it. I was surprised when the server asked if I wanted tapioca pearls (which I thought were a staple of bubble tea - perhaps I'm wrong?) and taken aback when I was charged extra for them.

I had this "Chicken Noodle Soup." It's the first time I've seen chicken in the beef (Pho Bo) type of broth, and it worked quite well. Not quite the depth of flavour you find on Somerset, but not bad.

My complaint is that the ratio of noodles to soup was too high. They offer one size of soup and then have a note saying you can upgrade to a Large for a buck. I opted for this Large version but now wonder if this meant they use the same bowl size and just increase the noodles!?

If I were staggering around drunk on Elgin craving some pho, I'd happily come here again. I won't drive across town for it though.

Nothing special. Not bad. Absolutely piping hot when they arrived!

I had the vegetarian version of these. They were okay, but not amazing. The vermicelli was well cooked, but the masses of iceberg lettuce made the roll a bit bland. I was a bit disturbed to find part of a sticker on the tomato slice in my *second* roll. I pointed it out to the server and suggested that they check for stickers next time.

These were very bad, but only because of the vermicelli. For one thing, they were stuffed with too much vermicelli but that would have been fine if it had been the usual moist noodles. What really got to us was the fact that these vermicelli were quite dry -- almost chewy. It was as though they'd been soaked a long time ago and then put aside until they dried out.

I saw someone else had ordered one of their vermicelli bowls and it seemed to contain the same kind of dried out vermicelli! Man, you'd need a whole cup of nuoc cham to get that down your throat...

These fresh spring rolls were actually made fresh (the rice paper wrapper was of a perfect moist texture) and contained a decent quantity of shrimp. Too bad about the vermicelli!