IMANISHI JAPANESE KITCHEN 1330 Dundas West, 416-706-4225. See listing.
There’s no sign outside Imanishi Japanese Kitchen, unless you count the one left over from the previous tenant, a Dundas West Portuguese sports bar.
“We ran out of money,” co-owner Daisuke Gomyo says by way of explanation.
So they’re not doing that underground, we’re-way-too-cool-for-signage thing?
“I’m not a huge fan of that!” he says, while his friend and partner Sori Imanishi listens in. “I don’t think it’s a customer-friendly thing. I heard people got lost and weren’t able to find us. But they’re not mad.”
It doesn’t surprise me that Imanishi is attracting attention: it serves some of the best Japanese snack plates I’ve tried.
Try Imanishi’s chicken wings.
But for all its cool, dimly lit vibe and strong, delicious cocktails, trying to make their new spot into the hippest Japanese joint in town was never high on the duo’s list of priorities. When they were finally ready to turn their recent pop-up at nearby bar Churchill into a permanent spot, they just filled it with their favourite stuff. Comic books line the walls, and skateboard decks have been fashioned into decorative hangers.
“This is what we eat, what we listen to, what we like,” says Gomyo. “All those things, in one package.”
The menu is typical of what folks their age (Gomyo is 35, Imanishi 30) eat daily in Japan, where Gomyo was born and Imanishi spent several years cooking. (They met 12 years ago in Vancouver, where they worked at Guu Gomyo later became the creative director for the chain.)
Tai carpaccio.
Fusion twists are nowhere to be found – unless you count the potato salad, umami’ed by judicious use of anchovies and flanked with taro chips for scooping, which they borrowed from a friend’s Spanish restaurant in Tokyo. (“It doesn’t have to be all Japanese – if it’s from Tokyo.”)
Corn kakiage, kernels suspended in a froth of hot, salted tempura batter, is a reasonably common Tokyo izakaya snack, but Gomyo says it’s been blowing the minds of the Dundas West crowd. Chicken wings in a pale ginger-garlic glaze were borrowed from a restaurant in Nagoya where Imanishi used to work, while tai carpaccio, light slices of snapper bathed in a soy-mirin marinade and scattered with a vaguely bruschetta-like tomato topping, is a must-order.
The selection of set meals, or teishoku, which features dishes like deep-fried chicken with tartar sauce, curry rice topped with tonkatsu, plus sides, recalls neighbourhood joints in Japan where folks might pop in for a lunch combo.
“That’s usually sort of a mom-and-pop shop, with the TVs on, regulars at the back,” Gomyo says.
“We eat more curry than sushi in Japan, that’s for sure,” he adds. “If you asked your friends what they like to eat, most of them would say, ‘I could eat curry rice every day.'”
They’re hoping Imanishi will attract just as many solo diners looking to scarf down a lunch combo as groups of friends wanting to toast a Friday night with some snacks and shochu.
Me, I’ll be one of those regulars at the back, face first into a bowl of Nagoya-style ramen – a spicy, gingery, burnt-orange brew packed with bits of chicken and pork. I could eat that every day.
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nataliam@nowtoronto.com | @nataliamanzocco
