Danny’s Sushi

Danny's Sushi arrived as a brick-and-mortar restaurant only after the demand for it already existed. The business grew out of catering and online orders into a storefront on Portage Road, in the Stamford neighbourhood of Niagara Falls — a small kitchen that turns out made-to-order sushi one ticket at a time. Its clearest signature came along for the move: the Shibuki roll, a deep-fried tempura roll built in crab, shrimp, salmon, or a vegetarian version, each one wrapped and crisped, then layered with cucumber, avocado, spicy mayo, and a scatter of tempura bits. It is the house move, and it doubles as the easiest on-ramp for anyone who comes to the table unsure about raw fish.

Past the Shibuki family, the menu rewards a second look. The Chef Combo is the broad read in one order, moving through nigiri, sashimi, and rolls without asking a diner to build a spread from scratch. The Spider Roll is the one to reach for when texture is the point — soft-shell crab, cucumber, mixed greens, fish roe, and spicy mayo folded into a larger roll — while Dragon, Rainbow, and Spicy Tuna cover the familiar special-roll territory. Beyond the rolls there are teriyaki dinners, crisp chicken kara-age, and no-rice rolls for anyone skipping the starch. Around the sushi sits the work that gives the kitchen away: gyoza, house pork dumplings pan-fried and served with soy vinaigrette and chili sesame oil; lumpia, deep-fried pork spring rolls made in house; and Toron for dessert, a spring roll of plantain and jackfruit plated with ube and coconut gelato. The Filipino accents are not the headline, but they tell you the kitchen's range runs past the sushi case.

What the menu says, more than anything, is that Danny's is built for planning. Sushi is made to order, and Danny's leans into takeout, delivery, and catering as much as the handful of seats inside. There is a thirteen percent discount for orders placed at least three hours ahead — not a daily special, just a standing reward for diners who know when they want to eat. Vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free markers run down the menu, so a mixed table is not stuck choosing between one fallback roll and a bowl of edamame. Avocado and cucumber, tempura yam, and the Shibuki Vegetarian give the plant-based side of a group actual rolls to order rather than consolation. It is a small operation that has clearly thought about how a crowd uses it.

The kitchen belongs to Danny Rimando, who opened the Portage Road restaurant in 2021 after more than thirty years working sushi. The Shibuki name on the signature rolls is not branding borrowed from somewhere else; it traces to his own Shibuki Sushi background, the through-line from the catering work that built the following to the storefront that now carries it. Local reporting at the time told the opening as exactly that — a kitchen finally taking an address its customers had been asking for.

None of this asks to be more than it is. Danny's runs six days a week, closed Tuesdays, out of a kitchen that does as much packing for the road as it does plating for the table. A first-timer can start with a Shibuki Crab and work outward; a planner can preorder a Chef Combo and a stack of rolls for a party three hours later; a vegetarian can build a real meal instead of grazing the sides. The sushi is the reason to come, and the way it's set up to be used — quick, flexible, a little better when you order ahead — is the reason a Portage Road neighbourhood keeps it on rotation.