Alright. Time for me to get excited … again.
I really am dying to tell you about this new restaurant in Richmond which I am quite sure will make some of you want to sit up to take note of.
Look at the food above. Guess how much all the above costs.
In the first picture is congee and noodles.
In the second picture is yam fries, squid, panko scallop and miso soup.
In the third picture is beef noodle soup, egg, toast and tuna salad.
Guess how much. Just guess.
Less than $15? Less than $10? Less than $5?
If you guess less than $5, you are right … not for each of them. It is less than $5 for ALL of them!
Toyotomi is located on Anderson Road. That is the small deserted road just across from the Richmond City Hall. When we visited them, they were opened for only the second day. They opened the day before for dinner only. We were there for their breakfast because we wanted to see what a Japanese breakfast is.
He he he … technically speaking Suanne and I were their first breakfast customer. We were the … first in line when they opened.
Suanne and I had that cheapest breakfast ever at the new Toyotomi Japanese Restaurant in Richmond.
OK OK … by the time you read this post, their grand opening 50% discount is over. That coupon above was only available for the first few days. But still, the breakfast we had was less than $10.
See the part on the ad above that says that they serve “Japanese Royal Family Menu”. I wonder what that is.
Although Toyotomi touted themselves as a Japanese restaurant, they are Chinese operated. Or at least everyone that we see are Chinese and speaks perfect Cantonese.
Their prices are cheap. Their cutleries and cups and everything is cheap too. Not that we fault them for it. It was just an observation. After all, we are not food snobs.
The restaurant was surprisingly HUGE. I estimate that they must be able to hold at least 150 people. The tables are all partitioned with 4 feet high partitions that you can’t see much when seated. Lots of privacy in the booth though.
The above is their very simple breakfast menu. You may click on it to display a more legible image.
I had never had Japanese breakfast before nor know what Japanese normally have for breakfast. However, the so-called Japanese breakfast above reminds me a lot of the combo options in a Hongkong Style Cafe. The names of the dishes sounded Japanese though.
As you can see above, the breakfast combo is just $4 for a selection of two items. Additional sides are 25 cents to $2.
Once we were seated we were given a full color order form for us to mark our order.
Suanne ordered from the Washuku Asa Gohan section of the menu, whatever that means. The name sounded great don’t you think?
For just $3.99 combo, she chose Pumpkin Salmon Congee and Yakisoba.
The Yakisoba was decent and has a sweetish Teriyaki taste. He he he … we overheard two customers asking for “lat jiu jeong” from the waitress. To the Chinese customers, it is just too bland and they needed some chili sauce to spice it up. I was telling Suanne “mo lat jiu jeong, mo ee see”.
The Pumpkin Salmon Congee was interesting. It was quite unlike the Chinese style congee. Instead, it was creamy and not salty at all as we come to expect congee to be. There is definitely a distinct taste of pumpkin and salmon.
My order is more substantial than Suanne’s although the price is the same ($3.99).
This is from the Yoshuko Asa Gohan … nice name too. The beef slices look like they were lightly grilled.
Can’t complain for the price. There are lots of noodles and the beef slices were respectably sized. Just don’t compare to Kintaro’s ramen soup. The soup here has a mild flavour. Food snobs can forgo this … for everyone else this is decent food. LOL!
You can get the choice of noodle between ramen, udon and spaghetti.
I love the side that came with the beef noodle soup. This is called the Tuna Sandwich Salad and topped with a sunny side up egg.
The shredded cabbage salad also had raw onion in it. As for the dressing, we can’t quite pinpoint what it is. There were chunks of tunas in the salad too.
With the toast on the side, I piled the tuna salad on it and broke the egg yolk over it. Super! I love this.
Since the meal was so cheap, we decided to get a few sides to try. The miso soup was just 25 cents. While miso soup in some other places are free, this 25 cents soup tasted very good … it looked and tasted a lot more richer and darker. However, Suanne complained it was rather salty.
The Panko Scallop was $2.00 for two pieces and came with some deep fried squid rings.
We like the scallop although it wasn’t very fresh tasting. What could you expect, right … for that kind of money? I must add that the scallop and squid is very oily.
We also had Yam Fries for $1.00 which is served with mayo.
Suanne did not like it because she said it was not crispy to her liking. Yeah, it was limp but still I like it.
So there you go … $4.71 only. If we were to tip 15%, it would come to only 70 cents. So being such generous people as we are we tipped almost 30%. Who dare say now that we are poor tippers, huh?
Toyotomi accepts only cash for now. They are having teething problems. I heard that they are forced to close today because of “plumbing issues”. Come to think of it there are quite a lot of restaurants I heard that is closed because of “plumbing issues”. What is the deal with that? Let me see … the ones that I know of are:
- Santouka on Robson, recently re-opened
- Swish Swish in Burnaby
- Negative Space in Richmond
Toyotomi has another location on East Hastings in Burnaby by the way. For this Toyotomi in Richmond, they serve:
- $4 set menu for breakfast
- $6 set menu for lunch
- $22 AYCE for dinner, and
- $13 AYCE for late dinner
We will definitely be back some day to check out their “Japanese Royal Family Menu”. Their take out menu looked very normal though.
Business Hour
7 days a week
5:00 pm to 12:00 am
Wow, that’s certainly how a new restaurant can make a splash: toonie breakfasts, quite the deal!
Nothing ever cost a toonie nowadays, isn’t it TS? It was exciting to be handed a bill for $4.71. Suanne and I were looking at each other and asking ourselves how should we tip. Ben
We were supposed to have the 50% off AYCE dinner there tonight but they cancelled it. The next day they phoned us back to say they will honor the discount on another day. So we’re booked for this Friday. We’re gonna try the Royal Family Menu which is part of the AYCE dinner. I’ll let you know how it is.
Hi Jonnek: I await bated breath for your report. Take some pictures and show me what a “Royal Family Menu” is like? Ben
Hi Ben,
I was in the same situation as Jonnek. We had the AYCE dinner for $11.00 for Tuesday, but they called and said they had a water leak. As for the honouring of coupon, I’m not sure, but I would like to give this place a try!
Here is a direct link to their menu: http://www.toyotomicanada.com/Menus.html. I hope it’s ok to leave links here.
Ryan, if you are still interested to try it, I suggest you talk to Heidi of Toyotami Richmond. She’s the one who phoned me to say they will honor the discount for those who made reservations on Tuesday.
BTW, I checked their website and it looks llke they cancelled their breakfast menu. They don’t open for breakfast anymore. Too bad, I really like to try their breakfast combos that were on for $3.99 regular price.
Ben, I will take some pictures of the Royal Family dinner when I go there on Friday. Wow, this could be a start of a new food blog.
“Plumbing issues” could be as simple as not having hot water or it could be code for more serious issues that they are not allowed to operate until they have corrected them.
Sorry for the duplicate comment. My screen hanged and I thought it didnt get posted.
No problem. I had deleted the (shorter) duplicated comment. I would love to see you start a new blog, Jonnek. Let me know if you need help.
Ben
The Burnaby location was a favourite of mine when I used to work out on Still Creek Drive. Loved their Nabeyaki Udon. I thought they were Japanese run though? Not like it matters too much though. 🙂
I live really close to that restaurant…was wondering why there was a huge group of people around it last weekend!
I also like to tip on the subtotal before the discount.
I used to go to their Burnaby location all the time when they first opened but not anymore. The quality has slowly gone downhill. Let’s hope the new Richmond location will have better time maintaining the quality level.
I loved that they have expanded their menu and locations. I discovered the original Toyotomi years ago and was quite the regular customer. I’ll have to go check out the new location.
Ben, the “plumbing issues” is usually hot water related i.e. the temperature is not high enough and very often, restaurants install low-temp dish washers which will not pass inspection.
Heidi came by my work the other day to make photocopies of the menu for their AYCE and it looks FANTASTIC. seriously. one of the best AYCE menus i’ve ever seen.
and she also told me how they will probably hold some sort of half price for their AYCE and it’d be announced next week or so…
Just came back from AYCE dinner at Toyotomi Richmond. As Ben described it, the place is huge, but I found the decoration to be just plain, bordering on cheap. The food was good though and quite fresh. I am also impressed with the food presentation. Its not like the run of the mill AYCE place. The Royal Family menu items consist of 1 appetiser (Cold Bonito soup) and 1 main (Sake marinated grilled salmon). They are good but don’t think they are special enough. Anyway, they change these 2 items once a month.
Service was quite good with the servers making sure the empty plates are promptly removed from our table. One of the items from the menu was not available tonight (teriyaki sirloin steak) but they gave us a couple of drinks to compensate. I’m not sure if we got preferential treatment because I’ve taking snapshots of the place and the food. Toyotomi’s head chef William was also around supervising the staff and chatting with the customers. I find that quite nice.
Overall it was a good dining experience. They also honoured the expired 50% discount after having had my reservation cancelled last Tuesday due to their plumbing issues.
I have taken some pictures and they can be viewed at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jonnek1028/ToyotomiRichmond052110#
Thanks a lot for the report, Jonnek. The food looked great. We are looking fwd to check out their Royal Family items ourselves.
Still waiting for Swish Swish to reopen. Their sign that they will reopen next week has been there for months now. I have a feeling they are changing ownership.
Husband and I peeked in and seems like they were packing/unpacking chairs and tables! For a stove problem or whatever reason they had, it was surprising to see new chairs and tables!
The Pumpkin Salmon Congee looks delicious!
btw “asa gohan” just means breakfast 🙂
Not sure about this place. First off, they wrote on their door that they would have new promotions due to the closure which never happened. They changed their menu and removed several items I was looking forward to and so the $22 price tag for AYCE is no longer justified. There are several AYCE places with “better items” at equal or lower prices. I was willing to give their quality a chance with the 50% off coupon/ new promotion but no new promotion and since I didn’t reserve on their closure day, I’m not going to risk $22 on items I have hardly any interest in. I guess it’s all the best since they mutilated the romanized Japanese ~ when you can’t be bothered to spell things right, why would I expect any better from the food?
Just went today and confirmed that they no longer serve breakfast due to short staff.
Tried their lunch menu instead. Most of them are your typical Japanese item. In another word, “Nothing special”
Food was just ok.
HEADS UP:
They took away the 50% off deal by now, if you didn’t know already. I just went to the restaurant, and sadly to say I felt sort of ripped off by the small portions and poor quality of food that they served out.
They also, no longer have all you can eat.
The AYCE is gone now too. Too bad it was the best one for dinner we’d found. Any other suggestions?
Hi Julie: So what is Toyotomi serving now that they don’t have AYCE? If you are looking for Japanese AYCE, have you ever been to Ninkazu before? Ben