Affinity Fish

*Link in bio to reserve!*

Wow! We are so blown away with the support from you all since we announced our impending closure last week. We have since fully sold out the rest of September and are almost sold out for October as well.

We noticed that we have a lot of folks on the wait list for our current omakase that is sold out, so we have decided to open up reservations for November early so that you can all have a chance to reserve!

This will be our last sushi omakase in this format. We’re definitely planning more sushi in December and January at a different price point for our final send-off.

Diners can expect a Whitefish gravlax Isobemaki to start, followed by Shinjo Stuffed Shiitake with pickerel cheeks and chrysanthemum ankake. Simmered Pacific Octopus with kabocha dengaku, and for the soup course we will have a poached daikon with shiso miso and clear soup to wash the palate before sushi begins.

Exciting sushi toppings for this meal include one of our favourites: Cisco (Lake herring) and plump Lake trout roe that we’ve just been receiving as the fish start to spawn in the fall. And finally for dessert, we will have an amazake and kinako burnt Basque cheesecake with cardamom syrup-poached Ontario apples.

We’re definitely feeling a touch bittersweet as we get closer to our final dinners, but we are so happy to see everyone come out and support us! We think these seats are going to fill up fast so don’t wait

The format for this meal will be as follows:

-$150, 12 course seasonal omakase with seasonal summer appetizers, nigiri sushi, and dessert.

-20% gratuity / service fee charged per ticket on the day ($30). 

-Total ticket cost is $180.

-6 course sake pairings available ($95) pairings with the savoury courses of the menu.

-Additional dessert pairings available. 

-Full drink list available: beer, wine, Sake, mead, non-alcoholic beverages.

This may be a few weeks late, but I just wanted to dedicate a post to what was truly one of the highlights of my career so far. It was such a pleasure having Jackie Lin and the Shoushin team join us for a night of indulgence and celebrating Canadian seafood.

This was easily the most food we’ve ever done in a single menu, and it was amazing to see all of your responses to the food. Thank you to everyone that came out, supported and enjoyed!

Looking forward to the next one!

-Matt

We are truly so blown away by the support that we’ve received since announcing our closure, thank you!

Ok now for our October Dinner Series: Wild Foraged Mushrooms & Wild Caught Fish. Celebrating the beginning of fall with a mushroom focused menu is something we’ve done since our first year here at the shop and it’s certainly one of our favourite times of year to cook.

Diners can expect 8 courses of kappo kaiseki inspired Cuisine with highlights being: Shiitake Mushroom and Hot smoked whitefish chawanmushi with plump whitefish roe garnished atop, our House made Agedashi tofu paired with fried maitake mushrooms and sweet sicely, our grilled course will be a shioyaki Whitefish seared in aged beef tallow, and for our dessert we will be bringing back a favourite from last year: Burnt Basque Kabocha cheesecake with amazake, Dry sherry and Macerated Niagara cherries.

We are super excited for this menu and to ring in fall with all of you for the last time here at Affinity Fish. We hope to see you all there!

The format for this meal will be as follows:

-$150, 8 course seasonal tasting menu with grilled fish, house made tofu, Chawanmushi and dessert.

-20% gratuity / service fee charged per ticket on the day ($30).

-Total ticket cost is $180.

-6 course sake pairings available ($95) pairings with the savoury courses of the menu.

-supplemental “Chinmi” course available with sake pairing.

-Additional dessert pairings available.

-Full drink list available: beer, wine, Sake, mead, non-alcoholic beverages.

📸: Matt Parker Max Taylor

After four years at 1581 Dundas St. W, and six years total building this company, we’ve made the difficult decision not to renew our lease and to close this chapter of Affinity Fish. This wasn’t taken lightly. We made many personal sacrifices to build the fish shop and restaurant we believed Toronto needed, and we’re incredibly proud of what we accomplished. But the reality is we haven’t been able to make the business financially sustainable in its current brick and mortar.
Over the past five years, we’ve worked closely with local fisheries to help improve the systems and quality behind the fish that reaches your plate, and we feel we’ve enriched food culture in Ontario through it. It hasn’t been easy: the industrial food system creates an expectation of convenience that small local fisheries struggle to meet, and weather, equipment failures and seasonal changes make it hard to compete with industrial giants. We had chances to lower our standards and source from large commercial distributors, but we chose never to compromise.
Despite all of this, we feel lucky to have had the chance to try. We couldn’t have done it without our families and friends, our staff, our fishing partners, the chefs who believed in us, and most importantly you, our customers. Thank you for letting us dream this dream.
This isn’t the end of Affinity Fish, just a chapter in its existence. We’ll operate as normal, wholesale, retail, a-la-carte and tasting menus, until our lease ends January 16, 2027, so come enjoy our last dinners and lunches.
Matt is starting his next project: Satchmo, a robatayaki-inspired restaurant with local Canadian fish and seafood, with pop-ups and residencies coming soon. Jon plans to stay in the food world, helping restaurants and fisheries make better decisions for the environment and local food culture.
If you’d like to support us in these last few months, reserve a dinner through the link in our bio, swing by for a-la-carte, or grab some fish to take home.
With eternal gratitude, Matt & Jon.

New à la carte menu!

Will start on Thursday September 3rd (next week). We’ve decided to go with a mix of familiar favourites and new favourites for this months à la carte menu.

Back to the classic fried whitefish sandwich for the Sando set, the noodles will be a cold soba (pictured above) with kalamansi, ramp oil, and a side of fried whitefish. And for the rice set we have decided to keep the tekka don because it has officially become our most popular dish.

Also of note, we have decided to bring on our housemade agedashi tofu, with a thickened dashi sauce and grated radish.

This menu is looking like a greatest hits of our previous menus, so we hope to see you soon!

📸: Matt Parker Max Taylor

•Dish Dive•

A new section where we highlight some of our favourite dishes on our current tasting menu:

For our August tasting menu we knew we wanted to use Ontario corn in some capacity. For this menu we decided to pair it with the beautiful swordfish from our friends Jason Tompkins served fried in a katsu style with panko bread crumbs and cooked till still juicy and pink in the center. Ontario corn kakiage, fried ginger, and kuroshichimi: a spice blend from Kyoto with mouth numbing citrusy goodness.

This is just one of the many courses that you receive in our Cold udon menu this month. So what are you waiting for?! Link in bio to reserve.

📸: Matt Parker Max Taylor

*Link in Bio to reserve!*

It always feels bittersweet announcing our final dinners for our summer months, this is a time of year that we look forward to for so long and for good reason, but alas here we are:

For the month of September we are back to our Canadian omakase menu format. With our P.E.I. fishing season in full swing, we have been receiving beautiful specimens of both swordfish and bigeye tuna recently. On the west coast, the albacore tuna grounds have blessed us with an abundance of one of our favourite fish that seems to be a crowd favourite in each and every sushi menu we do. Produce is also aplenty here in Ontario as we’re sure you all have noticed: Niagara stone fruit, summer squash, first of the season carrots, and of course nightshades are all literally popping off right now. 

Diners can expect a few appetizers including house-made corn tofu with whitefish “ushio” broth and tender caraflax cabbage. A nightshade “sunomono” with heirloom tomatos, Itachi cucumbers,  and a red miso / ponzu jelly. For the sushi portion of the meal we have a mix of familiar favourites as well as some new techniques that Matt has been working on. And finally, for dessert we decided to listen to our farmers do our take on peaches and cream with our amazake whipped cream, anise hyssop, and a brown butter cake. This menu screams “Summer isn’t over yet!” come and see if you agree!

The format for this meal will be as follows:

-$150, 12 course seasonal omakase with seasonal summer appetizers, nigiri sushi, and dessert.

-20% gratuity / service fee charged per ticket on the day ($30). 

-Total ticket cost is $180.

-6 course sake pairings available ($95) pairings with the savoury courses of the menu.

-Additional dessert pairings available. 

-Full drink list available: beer, wine, Sake, mead, non-alcoholic beverages.

***Link in bio to reserve!***

For one night only we will be hosting our friend and mentor Jackie Lin of Shoushin.

Some of you may know that our very own Matt Taylor spent 4 years working under Jackie at the now Michelin starred Shoushin and was Jackie’s very first deshi (apprentice). Many of the techniques and skills that we use on a day to day basis here at Affinity can be traced back to Matt’s training at Shoushin. 

For this one night only event we have decided to use exclusively Canadian seafood to highlight how amazing our resource is here in Canada. for those of you familiar with Jackies food you’ll know that he strictly uses only wild caught fish from Japan for his menus, excluding our delicious Canadian blue fin tuna. for this menu Jackie will be adopting the Affinity fish philosophy of using only Canadian fish and seafood. Our excitement to host a true friend and mentor cannot be understated, we hope you are as excited as we are!

For this Omakase Collaboration diners can expect 6 alternating otsumami (appetizer) from both Matt and Jackie followed by 12 pieces of nigirizushi made by hand from Jackie and Matt, and finally makimono, Tamago, and a light dessert. this is shaping up to be one of the best expressions of Japanese cuisine with Canadian fish that we’ve done to date so please don’t miss it! limited 12 seats per seating so act fast!

•New À la carte Menu!•

We’ve made some changes to our à la carte menu for the month of August! We always get asked if we do sashimi or sushi for our à la carte menus and so far we have not…

As we are in the hight of our tuna and billfish season we decided it was a perfect opportunity to introduce one of our favourite ways to eat tuna: Tekka don.

This delicious dish has its roots all the way back in the gambling rooms of old Edo (Tokyo) and it usually consists of raw tuna sashimi served atop a bowl of rice. Ours will be served with our Big eye tuna from Jason Tompkins in Prince Edward Island, house made takuan, wasabi, and cured egg yolk, and Nori.

We also have the returning favourite of our GoodFish Seafood Co. Ltd. Haida Gwaii Albacore tuna melt, and weve added a cold dashi udon with poached egg and pickled pimento peppers.

We are super excited about this lunch menu and we hope you will be too!

📸: Matt Parker Max Taylor

Due to unforeseen circumstances we’ve had to cancel our collaboration dinner this weekend…

We have decided to do a fresh new à la carte menu for just this last weekend! (July 31st & Aug. 1). We will be open for extended hours: 12 - 9pm as well. We’ve made some tweaks to our existing lunch menu but we’ve added some crowd favourites as well as some sushi and sashimi, something we are always asked if we can do for à la carte but haven’t done yet. This menu will be available for walk in only, no reservations.

So if you’re in town for the long weekend and want to have a nice meal with delicious fish and sake, come by and we’ll take care of you!



📸: Matt Parker Max Taylor