Favourite Japanese Dining Experiences in Edmonton

Japanese food is not just sushi.  Sushi made it famous worldwide, but there are all kinds of tasty Japanese food to eat.  Below, I've listed a number of tasty dishes at some of my favourite restaurants around Edmonton from breakfast to dinner.

First up is breakfast.  I actually don't know any Japanese places that serve Japanese breakfast in Edmonton, but I ran into a hybrid the other day at Tasty Tom's down on Whyte Avenue.  I ordered their breakfast snitzel which turned out to be a fried pork cutlet with panko breading.  So western breakfast of fried eggs meets a very well made Japanese tonkatsu.  The pan fried potatos were also done with curry powder giving it a bit of a Japanese flair.  This was a great meal that was quite filling.

Breakfast Snitzel.

Lunch and dinner options for Japanese food abound in the city.  I Love Sushi does sushi, but they're one of the only places that does a katsudon or oyakudon.  This is a real down to earth Japanese dish where you have the katsu cutlet or chunks of chicken in a cooked egg mixture with sauce on rice.  Quite tasty.

Katsudon

I've eaten at a number of ramen places in town.  Tokiwa Ramen is my current favourite.  Their long cooked tonkotsu broth is quite good, but their chicken shoyu broth (for their chuka soba) has more flavour according to my taste buds.  Their toppings and noodles are good, but their soup is great, so their bowls of ramen really take off.

Tonkotsu Ramen

The funnest place to have Japanese food is Dorinku.  I've been here for lunch and dinner and it is always a favourite as the food is great and the atmosphere is great.  The restaurant has lots of Japanese pop culture loaded into its decor from functioning vending machines, a toy figure collection on the way to the bathrooms, to food models.  They even show anime on the big screen.

Izakaya Lanterns out front.

Great display at the front.

Dorinku is full of tasty small dishes - like tapas, but Japanese pub style.  They do all kinds of sushi, but their cooked dishes are what really stand out for me.  They do Japanese curry, shaka shaka fries, karaage, stir fried udon noodles, seared tuna, sashimi salad, this really tasty beef rib, and more.  Everything goes great with a beer too!

A really tasty beef rib.

Another Japanese pub type restaurant is Izakaya Tomo.  This is another favourite place.  They have more of a variety of small dishes that are more izakaya-ish. Dishes like their daikon salad and kinpura (burdock root) are not very common.  They also do a really good takoyaki that isn't deep fried as far as I can tell.  I'm mainly eating their cooked dishes here like their Udon Aglio Olio E Peperoncino, gyoza, and karaage, but their sushi is good too.  Best of all, it all washes down with a beer.

Their cool looking upside down gyoza.

Finally, my favourite sushi place is Sushi Wasabi.  I've been eating here for a decade and their sushi doesn't disappoint. Nice large pieces of niguri sushi and good looking tamago.  The Japanese family who runs it used to even have a booth at the spring festival down at the Devonian Gardens.

Finally, coming in 2018 to Edmonton is Gyu-Kaku, a Japanese BBQ chain from Japan.  I've eaten several times down at their Calgary restaurant and they're expanding up here.  You grill all of your own meat at a table top grill in front of you and it is really tasty and again, it goes well with beer.