Ichiban Asian All You Can Eat located at 4261 Hwy 7 in Markham

I thoroughly enjoyed the all-you-can-eat sushi at the brand new Ichiban Aisan All You Can Eat in Markham.  It’s located on Highway 7 near Main Street Unionville and replaces Yang’s Sushi Bar and located in the same plaza as Smash Kitchen.

There is also the original location at North York.  They previously had an Ichiban Asian All You Can Eat at the Splendid China shopping mall but it closed down.  I visited that location in 2017 and the blog post about it is here.

Markham storefront

We called ahead of time to make reservations for five people (3 adults and 2 kids) for 4 p.m. on a Saturday and they accepted our reservation.  We then realized we were going to be late and changed the reservation to 5 p.m.  They seemed hesitant but accepted the change and confirmed it right away via text message.  I love that their system was so quick!

The inside of the restaurant from my seat

When I entered the restaurant, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they entirely renovated the space and it didn’t look at all like what it did at Yang’s Sushi Bar before.  They completely changed the look of the space to make it more modern with a darker colour scheme, raised ceilings, and with lots of booth seats.  The space was so sophisticated.  We got a booth seat near the entrance.  The restaurant was relatively busy at 5 p.m. already.  Our server brought us the tablet with which we would use to order the AYCE items and told me there was a sitting time of 90 minutes.  I had nearly forgotten about this (my friend who ate here told me about it initially).  Right away, we felt we had to immediately order quickly and eat because for our family, 90 minutes is not enough time.

AYCE prices for lunch and dinner

Self-serve salad, soup, dessert bar

There is a self-serve salad and soup bar that is in the middle of the restaurant for you to select items yourself.  There is a shaved ice machine and selection of desserts and tubs of ice cream too.

Soup and salad that my mom got from the salad bar

All of the items arrived to our table very quickly upon ordering on the tablet.

Every time that we submitted an order, the server had to manually finalize it on the tablet for us.  I prefer the restaurants where you can submit the order on the tablet yourself so it doesn’t feel like a chore to get the server’s attention every time.  However, our server was always near us and approved the orders very quickly.  She was very efficient in clearing our empty plates as well.

From L to R: seafood ramen, spider roll, torched salmon sushi, steamed beef dumplings, assorted sashimi, fried chicken wings, spicy salmon roll, edamame, curry chicken, lamb skewer, steak, okra, steamed egg, salmon belly, shrimp tempura

I really enjoyed the selection of food and sushi here.  I liked everything we got.  Their sushi rolls are not too big and had a good ratio of rice and fish.  They had steamed beef dumplings, okra, good portions of ramen, uni cream mussels, to name a few.

Highlights:

• Their torched sushi was amazing and melted in my mouth.  The torched salmon was my favourite.  The torched duck sushi was very good too!
• The steamed egg was a larger portion than at other restaurants and was so silky smooth!
• My husband really liked their sashimi and said it was very fresh.  I really appreciated that there was scallop sashimi!  It was sliced thinly though.
• The lamb skewer was absolutely amazing and I got seconds for it.  This is a must order!
• The New Orleans style chicken wings were really delicious.
• The Korean Spicy Beef with Steamed Baos was unique and not a lot of AYCE restaurants serve this.  The baos were really soft.
• The Spider Roll had a lot of soft shell crab in it.

(Some items like the lamb skewer and scallop sashimi are only available during weekends.)

From L to R: New Orleans wings, uni cream mussels, sashimi, vegetable tempura, fried banana, assorted torched sushi, vegetables, eel and avocado roll, Korean spicy beef with steamed bao, takoyaki

The servers were very nice and attentive.  One of them alerted us to the coat rack where we could hang our coats when she saw us trying to stuff the coats behind us in the booth seat.  There was free wifi at the restaurant.

When it came time to nearing the 90 minutes of seating time, the server asked us if we were finished and ready to leave.  She didn’t force us but gently asked us, which I really appreciated.  On the tablet, it says the seating time is 1.5 to 2 hours, so I understand why they tell us 90 minutes initially but then give us some leeway if we need it.

When we left at around 6:45 p.m., there was a huge crowd of people waiting for a table.  The server helped us to clear the way out to the door because we had a car seat in hand.  She was so helpful and nice.

If you pay in cash, you get 2% discount.  (I’ve never heard of 2% and was very amused when I saw it on the bill.)

Assortment of desserts from the self-serve dessert bar

We can’t wait to come back for another visit.  Lunch would be nice to visit.  If we come back for dinner again, we definitely would arrive before 5 p.m.  That way, I’m sure the servers could let us sit the full 2 hours (dinner rush begins around 6:30 p.m.).