Takara Bune 寶船

Sometimes I ask myself, “What the hell am I doing here? Wasting time writing a whole bunch of stuff online… who cares.” Silly girl… but I just can’t help. Maybe this is just what I like to do – whenever I experience a good restaurant or good food, I wanna share with other people. This is exactly how I felt when I went to Takara Bune last Friday. Remember I had lunch on Tuesday at JP2 with my ex-boss. That day he also mentioned a pretty good Japanese restaurant near Victoria Park and Sheppard. Therefore, there I go… I went to this restaurant for the very first time. If it was not his recommendation, I would never notice that there’s a Japanese restaurant at this plaza. From outside, it just does not look like a Japanese restaurant… unless you really pay attention to the logo – where it says “Japanese Restaurant”. To me, it looks more like a Western Chinese restaurant – not authentic Chinese, and not cheap either.

When we stepped into this restaurant at around 8p.m. There was a group of 8-10 customers sitting on the right side, and another person at the bar. Immediately, I doubted if this was really a good restaurant. You know, it was FRIDAY, which is supposed to be the busiest night of the week. Upon arrival, a Japanese waitress led us to a table in the main dining room. The restaurant wasn’t big – about six 4-person tables, a bar + the compartment on the right (i.e. max. 40 persons).

Looking at the menu, what a wide selection! Sometimes, having too many options can create headache too. Therefore, we decided to stick with our usual stuffs.

Start with a sushi pizza. This time we ordered the spicy salmon pizza, which “looked” kinda overfried on the outside. (OMG… due to the unpleasant experience I had recently. I really didn’t wanna be disappointed by sushi pizza again!). Had a bite, HUMMMMMM it was actually fried just right. The rice wasn’t too thick and the taste was good. Some people may find the taste a bit strong – because it is a spicy salmon sushi pizza. I’m sure the regular salmon/tuna pizza should taste lighter.

Then, the katsu don came, the portion was just right. Not too big, not too small. The taste was also very good.

I also ordered the Matsu set course, which came with 9 Assorted Sushi (Sake, Tuna, Ebi, Hamachi, Ika, Tako, Tamago, Kanikama, Tobiko & Sake Roll 6 pcs), Miso Shiru, Green Salad, and dessert. The miso soup was so-so. The taste wasn’t fantastic, but was at least fresh hot. Green salad was good, but I found the sauce a bit too thick. Dessert was ice-cream. Unlike most of the other restaurant where you usually have a choice of green-tea, red bean or mango ice-cream, here you can also get the chocolate ice-cream. So, that was what I got. It also came with two little wooden spoons imported from Japan.

Talking about the set dinner, the sushi/nigiri were fresh and good. The rice portion was filling, but not especially large. Another worth-mentioning point is that the proper seaweed sheet (nori) was used to wrap the sushi. Just from this seems-to-be-minor element, you can feel the effort that this restaurant has put in.

The total was about $46 before gratuity, which is not expensive at all!!! Good food, wide selection, good location (lots of parking space and close to fairview mall so you can go there after shopping), good service, and delivery also available to the nearby area. You can check out their website for more info… I don’t know how long this restaurant has opened, but I definitely think it deserves more customers than 10 people on a Friday night. I also heard that they offer lobster sashimi if you order in advance… YUMMM I’m gonna try that next time. (Compared to a lot of the non-Japanese-operated Japanese restaurant, I think Takara Bune does a pretty good job).

FYI: Takara Bune 寶船
2450 Sheppard Ave. E., Unit #106, North York
Tel: 416-491-6688