Sorry if this is slightly off topic but talk of Japan Deli brought back vague memories of another Japanese restaurant long gone. I can’t remember the name or exact location. I want to say in or near the Carrot Common, maybe around the early 90s? Does this ring a bell for anyone?
Greatly appreciated!
I don’t remember anything in the area at the time, but I wasn’t on the Danforth much in the 90s.
I’m pretty sure it was in the Carrot Common. Quite small and quaint. Some lovely staff.
It’s Mariko Japanese Restaurant in the Carrot Common. Thought I was imagining it. The old noggin isn’t what it used to be now that I’m almost a senior. 
Used Toronto Public Library’s Canadian Newstream Database and found a restaurant review from G&M. I’ve copied and pasted for anyone who might be interested.
ON THE MENU At Mariko, they aim to please Sushi has arrived in Yuppie central
Saturday, November 18, 1989
BY JAY SCOTT The Globe and Mail
ATHENS had its day; then Athens had it. The Greek hegemony on Danforth Avenue in Toronto’s Riverdale district has not had it - who would want that? - but an area that was once solidly meaty with shish-ka-bob has undergone a variegated transformation. Now that the neighborhood is yuppie central, lamb’s simply not enough.
First it was Ricky & Ricardo’s (Italian, and gone down hill), then The Willow (Mexican, and unchanged), then a palace revolution with Pappas Grill (yuppie Greek, and terrific), then Bibiche Bistro (continental, and splendid). The most recent addition is Japanese - Mariko, by name. When you can get sushi on the Danforth, the times they have a-changed.
Mariko began life in the Annex, but moved over to the Danforth and into the Big Carrot Common. The Common is a New Age shopping mall that centres on the Big Carrot, a whoppingly expensive health-food grocery store, but the Common also hosts a pasta place, a coffee shop that’s heavy on tea, a book store, and a crystal emporium. Mariko, in the rear of the complex, shares an entrance with a sporting-goods store, which may explain why Mariko’s clientele looks, on average, a lot healthier than the Big Carrot’s clientele. (Why is it that so many habitues of health-food stores are mucilaginous in complexion, like Tennessee cave fish? Does eating healthy make the diner unhealthy, or is it merely that the already unhealthy have come to healthful habits too late?) Mariko bows cleverly to the prejudices of the Common with a variety of vegetarian dishes (soba, a buckwheat noodle served cold as a salad or hot in soups, is a staple, and brown rice is available with everything for a 50-cent surcharge), but it also serves beer and wine, has a smoking section, and doesn’t stint on its teriyaki steak dinner: there’s something for almost everyone.
Sushi, the raison d’etre of a neighborhood Japanese restaurant (changed times, part two: when you can talk casually in Toronto of a neighborhood Japanese restaurant, you know the chimera of cosmopolitanism has become concrete), is fresh and delectable at Mariko, if not plentiful: the more exotic fishies are missing, which probably won’t bother conventional sushi seekers. The sashimi is equally fine, of course, and the miso (tofu) soup that precedes the $15 sushi dinner is exquisitely perfumed. The salmon in the salmon teriyaki dinner ($14.50) may have been frozen, but it’s good anyway, and the chicken katsu dinner ($11.50) - Japanese fried chicken, if you will - is more than good; it’s enough to have the Colonel demoted to Private. Mariko’s only failing, in fact, is its tempura, which should be airy and insubstantial, like ethereal organic lace, but is in reality a bit mushy and a trifle greasy.
Order the tempura and leave half of it, however, and one of the waitresses will swing by your table immediately to find out what’s wrong: at Mariko, they care about their food and they want you to like it; if you don’t, they’ll offer a substitution. Another patron reports that on a recent visit, she left her egg sushi behind. Again, the waitress wanted to know what the problem was. “Just don’t care for egg sushi, never have,” the patron shrugged. “Next time,” the waitress admonished maternally, “you might want to consider ordering from the sushi board, so we can give you exactly what you want.”
Giving this neighborhood - hedonistic yuppies, enthusiastic Greeks, health-food fanatics - exactly what it wants is no mean feat, but the tastefully, simply decorated Mariko manages; this is a New Age neighborhood restaurant for the newly aged.
Mariko, 348 Danforth Ave., 463-8231, non-smoking section, accessible to wheelchairs.
Good work! That name does ring a bell. I don’t know if I knew it from the Carrot Common or from the Annex, where I went to school and also lived for part of the 80s.
I asked Gemini AI first but they weren’t able to help 
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