Out & About #30 | UCanShops + More Aka Teppan?!

Considering that I will be out of the province/country for a good month as of next week, today will probably be my last trip to Markham for a while.

After physio I headed over to First Markham Place to pick up a few things and stopped by UCanShops to see if they had a foot peeling mask I could try out before my walking-intensive vacation.


They were actually having a MASSIVE blowout sale, but as I am saving as much as I possibly can for my upcoming vacation, I only picked up what I needed.

For lunch, I was actually really craving pizza, and somehow thought that Aka Teppan would have some.

But alas, upon cracking open the menu, I realized that they did not have pizza, nor anything resembling pizza in the slightest. They had cheesy gyoza and their trademark teppanyaki pasta/rice, as well as sticky rice cakes. But sadly, pizza was nowhere to be found.

My mom ordered a Teppanyaki Chicken Spaghetti, while I took the waitress's recommendation and opted for mini hamburg steaks filled with cheese.

Though the waitress had described the cheese hamburg steaks to be like meatballs with cheese that would ooze out upon cutting them open, the small clump of mozzarella was still pretty firm when I received it. The flavour wasn't particularly distinct, but it tasted pretty good nonetheless. I could definitely do with a little less oil and perhaps a tangy dipping sauce as opposed to an extremely salty one next time though. Thank goodness I ordered a Strawberry Jasmine Tea (with strawberry jelly hearts!) to cut through the greasiness!

For dessert, I had really been wanting to try out their renowned flower pot tiramisu for dessert and was about 99.9% set on ordering the roasted coffee flavour. But what do you know? They were completely out of both the roasted coffee and original flavours. Left with no other choice than to pick a different dessert such as the panna cotta (which I had already previously tried out) or opt for the Wildberry flavour, I decided to go with the latter.

I can't say I made the most informed decision though. The supposedly sweet-with-a-slightly-sour-twang Wildberry flavour turned out to taste more like a sugar-laden artificial strawberry pudding instead. The chocolate graham crackers were nice, and the strawberry jelly bears were a cute little addition. Had this been the roasted coffee version, all would have been perfect.

> Side Realization: While I was Googling 'Aka Teppan' to make sure I had indeed spelled the restaurant name corrently, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my photo from my first Aka Teppan visit was the first one to pop up on Google Images among all the thousands of other Yelp and Urbanspoon pictures!

To read about my first Aka Teppan visit, click here. I have also visited the fusion restaurant on a different (more recent) date, as documented here. =)

P.S. About that Anime North entry...depending on the amount of time required to pack for the highly anticipated out-of-country vacation (or the amount of motivation I manage to gather over the next couple days), the post may or may not get delayed up to a maximum of one month (or more). Aha.