Axia Restaurant
5045A Plantation Place, Mississauga
PH: 905-608-AXIA (2942)
www.axiarestaurant.com

A world of Asian Cultures. One Dining Experience.

Following the trend of Asian fusion cuisine, a new Asian restaurant opened up in the west end of Mississauga. It’s name, Axia, I am guessing is likely a play on the word Asia. The s changed to an x since the culinary creations on this menu span almost the entire Asian gamut from Japanese, Chinese, Korean, to Thai, Malaysian, and Vietnamese.

The building stands by itself. Little would you know that the interior décor alone is quite a feast for the eyes. Keeping with the open-concept way of design, the one giant room houses several tables scattered around haphazardly. In the middle stands 4 grand wooden pillars as if it were encompassing a section of the restaurant for VIP guests. The ceiling is bare and painted a dark brown, as is the general décor of this place. Not much prominent lighting except for those oriental paper lanterns in many sizes, which hang above the “VIP” area. It’s almost as if they made it seem like you were actually eating outside in a wooden area. Sort of reminded me of the Ramen Museum in Yokohama, Japan – for those who know what I’m talking about.

Full sized floor-to-ceiling windows surround the entire restaurant bringing in more natural light, and making it fun to watch outside as you eat. One the far (west) side of the restaurant are a few private rooms for those who wish to eat in private. No party rooms are available however. A small sushi-counter sits besides these rooms. Not much action was going on there this evening.

The waitress hands us our menu, which literally drops solid on the table. It is thick and heavy making us wonder exactly how large a menu this place really has.

The menu starts off with a lunch meal. Me, not thinking too clearly reads this section and looks at the prices. $7.95… $8.95… $9.95. “Hey, not badly priced” I thought to myself. Then of course I read the “Lunch Menu” written at the top.

I flip the page and here comes the extensive non-alcoholic beverage menu. The pages are neatly presented with photos of popular bubble tea, slushies, and other Asian wonders. Although the alcoholic beverage listing seemed quite extensive, almost 80% of it was covered by a plain white piece of paper giving us the suggestion that it wasn’t actually available… yet. No warm sake or sochu tonight.

Flip the pages and then you’ll see the title page for Chinese cuisine. Splattered with nicely photographed dishes, it was easy to simply order what “looked” good rather than what we read and thought was good. This was more likely to happen though since the menu being very dark, small print, and low ambiance lighting made it quite difficult to read at night. We have your typical Chinese dishes that range from Yan Chow Fried Rice to General Tao’s Chicken. More of the popular Chinese dishes, but still quite the selection.

The next section was devoted to Japanese cuisine, which ranged from pre-set bento boxes to a myriad of sushi pieces to specialty rolls (i.e. Axia special roll for $12.95). Keep turning the page and you’ll see familiar Japanese items such as Teriyaki chicken, chicken katsu, and even ramen and zarusoba noodles, which I was quite surprised to see.

Next on the Korean menu we saw things like Korean seafood pancakes, tofu soup, kimchi soup, kimchi fried rice, kalbi, bibimbap, and others. Quite a fair bit of selection I would say. The soups seemed quite expensive though at around $10.95-$12.95.

And finally we have your Southeast Asian section which comprised of cuisine from Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. These included a wide selection of curries: beef, chicken, veggies, or seafood green or red curry; pad thai; Thai seafood noodles; Thai shrimp fried rice; spring rolls; pho noodles, and more.

It actually took me quite a long time to decide on my order as I wondered which dish to get.

We ended up with a wide selection of choices from:

Japan: Ramen noodles (spicy), California roll
Korea: Korean pancake
China: Spicy Szechuan Jumbo Tiger Shrimp
Thailand: Chicken Red Curry, Thai Shrimp Fried Rice

Upon ordering, it was probably no more than 5-10 minutes before our dishes started popping up. Real quick! The fried rice, curry, and tiger shrimp dishes all came first – before the appetizer pancake dish!

California Roll: 6 pieces. The most noticeable difference here was the black sesame mixed on the outside of the roll. Normally seen with white sesame, this was had a look all on its own. The avocado, cucumber, and fish roe were all fresh and tasty. The rice on the outside was a little soft and not enough for the amount of stuffing on the inside. The seaweed… what seaweed? I saw it, but seriously didn’t taste it at all. Overall though, not a bad maki.

The Shrimp Fried Rice: Short grain rice almost slightly converted mixed with peas, carrots, onions, and sitting on a bed of lettuce. Despite its slightly bland flavour, I enjoyed it for some reason. The shrimp was tasty, which was just about the only thing that seemed to have much of a taste in this dish. A little soy sauce or salt and pepper would probably have helped it do wonders. This was a dish that was on the lighter tasting side of things.

Thai Chicken Red Curry: Tenderized chicken morsels in a rich, thick and creamy Thai red curry sauce. Did I mention this was rich and creamy? Just too rich for my liking, in addition to it being super sweet. I had reviewed the Spoon and Fork restaurant a while back and mentioned they put a lot of sugar in their sauces. But I believe the red curry here at Axia is even sweeter, which is just too much for me. The chicken, in all its softness, was not bad so eating it with the bed of white short grain rice was a good match.

Spicy Szechuan Jumbo Tiger Shrimp: $14.95. This was one of their signature dishes in the Chinese section of the menu. Very flavourful and can be quite spicy if you request it. Again, an overdose of the sauce but thankfully not as sweet as the red curry. The abundance of onions nicely complimented the sauce, and the charcoal grilled-like jumbo shrimp did in fact taste just like that.

The next set of dishes came soon after:

Ramen noodles: $5.95. The menu didn’t really specify what flavour of ramen this would be. It simply said spicy or non-spicy. And for $5.95 we figured it was worth giving it a try. An average portion – more than what you would get at Ajisen – this was an interesting “ramen.” The soup base really didn’t have much of a flavour to it. It seemed like it was lost and didn’t know whether it was a soy sauce flavour or a miso flavoured ramen. Probably neither of the above. But still, its non-oily, non-salty, and ever-so-lightly flavoured soup was quite pleasing to my palette. The noodles? Egg noodles were used and I couldn’t figure out if they actually made their own noodles or bought it frozen. It wasn’t all that bad except for it being slightly over-cooked. Could it be that they possibly get it from the Japanese noodle-maker in Mississauga? Although this dish lacked some flavour to it, it was still something that I enjoyed eating. A little mix of soy sauce also did wonders for this one.

Korean seafood pancake: $11.95. Roughly about 30cm in diametre, this was quite a large portion that got me by surprise. Served on a hot iron plate that wasn’t sizzling, this one was yet again a lighter-tasting dish. Squid pieces and lots of green onions were sandwhiched in a thick pancake batter. The entire pancake must have been about 2cm thick. Overall, not a bad dish but even with the accompanying pancake sauce, this was very light in taste. I immediately thought to myself, I need some mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce to go with this one!

Coffee-Taro Milky bubble tea with tapioca: $4.69 + $0.50 for the bubbles. Although this was supposed to be a large drink, it was quite small. The drink itself came slightly warm, because of the coffee I’m hoping. The taste was quite refreshing and flavourful that I liked this one. Low on the taro flavour it was almost like an iced-coffee drink. The tapioca was ever-so-slightly undercooked in the middle but still chewable.

The service was prompt and courteous with friendly, young Asian waitresses (I saw one non-Oriental and only 2 waiters). Fast service, and attentive services is always pleasing to have at any establishment.

Overall, I would say not to come here expecting authentic Asian cuisine. But I suppose one could tell this simply from the name, Axia. Keeping this in mind, you’ll have a myriad of choices to decide from and will probably appreciate the dishes more. I only had a small selection of their entire menu so personally, I wouldn’t mind going back to try some more. Some of the blandness of the dishes could be offset by asking for some soy sauce on the side and doing a little mixing of your own at the table. Generally, not a very greasy type of restaurant but in some cases too rich in flavour to my liking.

I have to say that the fact that this is only 10 minutes away from my home is a big bonus. Being able to order so much from one menu is something nice to have so close to home. I’d go back a second time only to try out the things I haven’t tried before.

I was stopped at a red light waiting for it to turn green. I noticed two lanes to my left that there was a police officer. So, I figured everybody will be on their best behaviour along this road.

Once the light turned green, the cars slowly starting moving forward except for the one in the very far left lane. It sped like there was no tomorrow as if he was in a drag race by himself. I thought to myself as he accelerated way beyond the speed of what my little Honda Civic is capable of, what is this guy doing? I think he was trying to get from 0 to 100 in as fast as he could possibly go in his Pontiac Grand Am. I thought it was a bit strange though seeing as the police car was right behind him right from the lights. So I wondered what that Pontiac was up to.

As he increased his speed the police car followed suite literally right behind him. As I watched steadily to see if the Pontiac would slow down, he did exactly the opposite and accelerated some more, all while the police car was tailing him. Finally, the siren went on and the lights flashed as the officer motioned the Pontiac to move to the side.

I figure the officer was just waiting until the Pontiac bypassed a certain speed so that he could ticket him a good amount. I don’t really know what the driver of the Pontiac was thinking. I assume he didn’t know the police car was right behind him from the beginning… or at all for that matter.

In any case, he got what he deserved and I just thought it was quite certainly the stupidest move I’ve seen this week… or month for that matter.