Lu Mama Asian Fusion

Lu Mama

1858 Ste-Catherine West
Montreal, QC
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Taiwanese/All-You-Can-Eat Sushi/A little bit of Korean thrown in for good measure

This is a bit of an odd place. It calls itself Asian fusion, but only in the sense that it offers dishes from different countries in Asia. There's nothing really fusion about their menu, thank goodness.

It started out as a Taiwanese place, but there wasn't a big enough market, so they say, for their Taiwanese food. What is there a big market for in Montreal? All you can eat sushi, apparently, though I don't think it's particularly huge here. Still, in the downtown area (Guy-Concordia, to be precise) there are at least 4 options for AYCE sushi within a three block radius. None of them are amazing, and at least two are passable, this being one. The other being Tokyo sushi. Kanda is junk and makes me want to cry over how bad the fish is, and I haven't tried Odaki, having done the rotating sushi bar well in other cities. I just can't let my heart get broken again.

So coming to Lu Mama was like putting my heart on a platter and presenting it an evil fairy godmother. I figured it wouldn't turn out well, but there was something I needed - a lot of sushi for less than the ridiculous prices that mediocre places in the city make you pay.

Know what? It wasn't bad! A lot of it was even good! and some of the Taiwanese dishes were pretty okay too. There was even a sweet potato appetizer that had obviously been sitting too long in its sweet sauce, since the starch in the potato had broken down a bit, but again, not bad.
There isn't even a Taiwanese menu here, as far as I know. At least, we were only offered the AYCE menu. All the usual suspects were there.
I don't eat tempura, but it seems like that's what this place specializes in, since there's about a page of the stuff. There's the normal vegetable and shrimp tempura, but then there are also the Taiwanese ones, like the popcorn chicken (pictured at the top - I did try a piece to be fair, and it was pretty good. Not too greasy, but actually very flavourful. The chicken inside even tasted like chicken, and was tender). There were other deep-fried and breaded chicken options, like the black pepper, which was just okay. If you like tempura I think this is a decent place, especially for the price.

Then there are the chicken and beef dishes. You get a few little slices per order, which is all you want, really. In this case the chicken was boring and the sauces - peanut, teriyaki, Japanese curry, etc. were bland. The best sauce of the evening was the wasabi masago on the beautiful mussels. I'm wary of mussels at a not-top notch sushi place, but these were juicy and huge and obviously fresh. Besides, the wasabi is anti-microbial, so it'll kill off a fair bit of bacteria and help out your stomach.
Other strange things on the menu were deep-fried tofu (again, the guy manning the deep-fryer did a good job) and spring rolls. The breaded shrimp were not coated in panko, but rather some other breading that I liked better. Then peanut sauces and black pepper sauces were drizzled over them. They didn't even get too soggy, and the breading was more like frozen chicken fingers than Japanese tempura. It was actually a nice change, so that shouldn't really be taken as an insult.
Then the maki. The crab meat was actually decent. It wasn't too sweet, and one of the rolls used a better imitation crab meat than the usual crab sticks. The California roll (on the right) did not...
Almost everything came with tempura bits in it, but they were very accommodating with making exceptions since the restaurant was pretty empty. The ambiance is nice, though a little dark, and they were probably only having a bit of success because the people who didn't feel like waiting in line at the new Izakaya place down the road, Kazu, might drift in here. It's kind of sad because this place wasn't bad!

Until...
There is a hole in the salmon. This is not okay. This shows a lack of respect for the fish by the sushi chef. Okay, he's not Japanese, but really...

It's a very bad cut - very imprecise and uneven. The fish is draped nonchalantly over the rice. The rice was also good at some points in the meal, and not good at others, which says to me that the rice vinegar dressing was not mixed in well, and that different batches of rice (though I do't think they could have gotten through an entire batch of rice with just our table and the one other occupied table that evening) are not made consistently. Often the rice was over-seasoned with too much sugar or salt, or pre-seasoned rice vinegar. Rice is delicate and this was not.

Still, the next bunch of nigiri sushi that came out was better, and both the shrimp and salmon were consistently delicious all night. I'm very picky when it comes to salmon and I was actually very impressed here. Yes, it was Atlantic and I prefer Pacific, but it was tender and smooth. The shrimp were juicy and perfectly cooked. Even the cucumber in the maki was freshly cut and very refreshing, even if not cut into properly-sized batons. The mise en place in sushi prep (all the cutting) is very precise and dogmatic, but I didn't mind because I didn't come here for the best sushi experience ever. Lower your expectations and enjoy the good tasting salmon and shrimp.
Skip the surf clam that tastes like rubber, and god forbid you order the octopus. You will spend the next five years of your life chewing.

Also skip the sushi pizza. For something that I thought might actually be originally Taiwanese, this is not the version you find at most restaurants. It was diced vegetables in the same sweet masago as the mussel (to the right, below) on a deep-fried piece of breaded rice. There was no fish involved and the diced vegetables were just bizarre. Also, there is nothing pizza-like about it, but when you only order one serving I guess it's hard. We figured we'd get the whole pizza, not just one serving. Ah, the complexities of the AYCE menu. You just never know what you'll end up with in terms of serving size. That's where the "you pay for what you don't eat" business is such a scam. You always have to order small portions, and I feel so bad for the kitchen staff that has to make the same dish three times in slightly different portions for just your table throughout the night. It has to be done quickly and the same each time. It sounds like an awful job.

...but they do it here happily, at least when there aren't 20 tables to worry about. Food was fast, but not too fast, as if everything had been prepped in advance. The servers were friendly, even if they didn't understand the menu and couldn't always answer our questions. They always smiled, even when we asked for another ordering form and kept eating. They never judged us, which is the most important part of a buffet. At least, they didn't judge us in English, and I choose to think they didn't judge us in any other language either.

So, for Taiwanese snack food, decent salmon and shrimp, and good tempura, this place is definitely, definitely worth it. A grand total of $25 including tax and tip, and that was generous.
I'm not scared of getting sick from the fish here, like I am at Kanda, and I like supporting the small operation. Just choose you orders carefully, but isn't that the ultimate AYCE rule?

Hours: Mon-Sat noon – 3pm, 5:30pm -10:30 pm
Expect To Pay: $25 Mon-Thurs, $29 Fri-Sat, including tax and tip. You don't need to order AYCE, but I can't see that anything else would be worth it, unless the menu was greatly expanded with Taiwanese specialties
(514) 582-2222