Tomokazu Japanese

The first time I was at Tomokazu, it was for their deluxe dinner menu in July 2010. I thought it was fantastic then, and at $27 per person before tax, it better have been. This time, we were there for their $10.95 lunch menu. Expectations were obviously less stellar than before, but it turned out worse than I anticipated.

We started out with the usual appies, miso soup, goma-ae, and ebi sunomono. The goma spinach was tender and covered with just the right amount of sauce. I didn't have the other appies, but the rest of the party had no complaints. Sorry about the grainy pics. I'm still learning to use my new camera :-(

Next, we got some rolls and cones. People didn't want to fill up on these, so we only had a few orders of the Tomokazu roll, california roll, spicy tuna cone, and spicy seafood cone to satisfy a few people's cravings.


The Tomokazu roll had what appears to be a imitation crab tempura with some tobiko and assorted veggies (cabbages and cucumber). It was rather dry and flavorless and needed some tangy mayo or sauce to help it out. The california roll was your standard imitation crab and avocado - nothing special here.


The spicy tuna cone was quite tasty, but had way too little tuna stuffed into it. The spicy seafood cone looked to be canned flaked salmon/tuna with a splatter of mayo. It also suffered from a dryness problem as flaked canned fish often do. More sauce would have helped a lot here, but nothing can really save this mystery meat.

We then had orders of agedashi tofu, chicken katsu, beef teriyaki, chicken teriyaki, and gyoza.

These were all excellent. The chicken katsu and tofu were lightly breaded and fried until lightly crispy - not oily at all. The usual pork katsu sauce complimented the chicken well. The chicken teriyaki was also pan fried to a perfect crispness and dressed with a right amount of sauce. They also used a nice fatty chicken for both so they were very moist.

The first order of gyoza was slightly burned but the wrapper was light, and the pork filling was moist and flavorful. The beef teriyaki was also well tenderized and reminiscent of slow cooked fall-off-the-bone type stewed meats. There were no tendons, or hard veins of fats or anything that you usually find in low quality beef teriyaki. In fact, they should have called it teriyaki beef stew because it was swimming in a pool of thin liquidy sauce. This was the only downside to the dish but I still thoroughly it. I ordered seconds right away.

Next came our orders of nigiri sushi. We got salmon nigiri, tuna nigiri, tamago nigiri, tobiko nigiri and inari nigiri. I enjoyed these as little as I did the rolls earlier. They all suffer from poorly seasoned sushi rice. The tamago was alright, but the the salmon and tuna used for nigiri just seemed a bit off to me both taste and texture wise. Having eaten some prime sashimi often in the last little while, it was hard to stomach this obviously lower quality sashimi meat. Despite my reservations, the others in my party managed to scarf down 50 of the salmon nigiri alone and thought they were great. I guess they have less discerning taste than I do.

No lower mainland Japanese AYCE would be complete without some motoyaki. Tomokazu offered seafood and seafood motoyaki with "Portuguese" sauce. Normally, seafood motoyaki has imitation crab, salmon, tiny scallops, mushrooms and other ingredients you can identify. However, these were unlike any seafood motoyaki I've had elsewhere, and were filled with a mash of corn and some sort of mystery meat paste that reminded me again of canned salmon, but this time, the non-flaked, whole filet with bone and skin variety. These didn't suffer the dryness problem because they were soaking in oily mayo, but the mystery meat was still unappetizing. Despite this, I ate four of the motoyakis...

The "Portuguese" sauce variety, though, everyone agreed was terrible. The sauce was not as oily as the mayo-smothered regular version, but it was bland and the texture was off. Paired with with the mystery meat, one of the 5 orders we had sat until it turned ice cold at the end of the meal.

Continuing with their pattern of excellently fried foods, the yam tempura and unagi fried rice were very tasty. The tempura was lightly battered and again not oily at all. Unfortunately, the variety of yam/sweet potato they used was not my favorite. I prefer the orange-fleshed variety and they used yellow. Since both of these are the same price at grocery stores, I can't really fault them for choosing an "inferior" variety. This was just my personal preference. Despite having next to no trace of unagi, the unagi fried rice was well-seasoned and a tasty carb filler item.

A few people also had chicken karage and I had an order of Alaska roll. Didn't manage to take pictures of these, but they were both pretty good. There were actually many orders of the karage and I should have snapped a few pics. 

We finished off the meal with orders of fruit which turned out to be slices of oranges, and jello. The oranges were fresh, and this is important because I've been to many awful Japanese AYCE places that served near rotten or moldy ones. These were very sweet and the crew ate a ton of them. The jello was the real darkhorse here. Nobody had high expectations for this, but those who choose to eat them couldn't get enough and had seconds. They were very sweet and firm, and probably packed with way too much sugar, but awesomely delicious.

For $10.95, I wasn't expecting much, but given my memories of the good deluxe dinner I had here last year, i was expecting some better execution in their sushi. I normally don't like deep fried foods, but found theirs to be very well done. Despite this and the cheaper price tag than most comparable Japanese restaurants, I'm not sure I would choose to come back for Japanese AYCE lunch. Maybe if I wanted to stuff my face with fried foods only since the rolls/nigiri were really hit and miss here for me.

Nothing special to note about ambiance and service. Both were decent and satisfactory. The place was clean with Japanese-style decor, and our teapots were topped up regularly. Food was served promptly and plates were bused regularly and not allowed to pile up.

Pros:
-cheaper than most other AYCE lunch menus
-well-executed fried foods
-awesome jello!
-attentive service

Cons:
-low quality rolls
-use of what seemed like low quality and mystery meats
-very hard to find free street parking in the area

Notes: 
-open late with late night menu

Website:
http://www3.telus.net/ninkazu/