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.

Cool Japanese Snacks

Japan produces some of the best snacks and candy.  Here are some of the ones I've tried over the years.  Their snacks and candy are so popular they are found all over Asia and can even be found in various oriental supermarkets in Canada and the US.

Nissin Cup Noodles.  Nissin invented the instant noodle in the form of Nissin Chicken Ramen in the 1950s and then they developed the cup noodle in the 1970s.  There are many flavours of cup noodles in Japan and in Asia, and they are much better than what you find in typical North American supermarket shelves.

Canned bread.  This stuff comes in many flavours and is often branded with an anime series.  They aren't bad at all considering it is canned bread and they remind me of those Italian holiday cakes you can buy in a box at Christmas.

Japanese Kit Kats.  These come in an awesome number of flavours.  Some are really good, some are kind of so so, but their Kit Kats rock overall.  The Green Tea Kit Kats are very common and very tasty.  There are regional specialty Kit Kats with exotic flavours like ponzu, red bean, Japanese strawberry, pear, soybean, etc.

Pocky.  These are biscuit sticks covered with chocolate for the basic variety and they have many many varieties like the Kit Kat.  There are special dessert Pocki and stubby thick Midi Pocky too.

Coconut Pocky and tropical Pocky shown below.  Like many types of snacks in Japan, there are many limited edition and seasonal Pocky that are available for limited amounts of time.

Karipori Candy Sticks.  There is cola and ramune flavours on the left, and grape and melon on the right with Pikachu.

Pretz.  These are savoury biscuit sticks.  The ones below are shoyu flavour, as in soy sauce.

Jagabee Potato Sticks.  Many different flavours and eating these reminds me of eating really crispy french fries.

Look Chocolate and a couple of other ramune flavoured candies and gum.

Puccho chewy candies and whistle candy.  Everyone likes the chewy candies with the little gummy bits embedded within.  The whistle candies are fun as you can really blow through the little hole in the middle for a loud shriek and they come with a little toy.

Various kinds of rice crackers. Very delicious.

Different types of potato chips and snacks from Calbee.  I really like their curry potato chips.

Hard candies and gummy candy that is ramune flavour (a type of Japanese lemon flavour - very nice).  The Super Soda candies have a really sour coating.

Meltykiss chocolates.  These are pretty deluxe little chocolates with an intensely flavoured center of green tea and strawberry in the boxes shown below.  They come in individually wrapped cubes and are very good.

Instant miso soup.  You have a dried ingredient pouch and another pouch holding the miso soup paste.  Very popular in Japan.

This is another kind of instant miso soup that is freeze dried.  This is from an American company and the little puck rehydrates almost instantly with boiling water.  Quite good.

The rehydrated miso soup below.

This is a type of summer watermelon gummy candy that is pretty delicious, but available for the summer months mainly.

Puccho sour plum flavour chews.

Ramune soda.  These are bottled like sodas were in North America in the early 20th century.  The bottles are sealed with a marble under a cap and you have to push the marble in with a special tool that comes with the bottle.  There are two notches in the glass on the inside of the bottle to hold the marble back when you sip.

Takoyaki flavoured corn puffs.

Ramune bubble gum candy.

Summer watermelon candy

More ramune chewy candy.

Ema hard fruit candies.  These are sugarless.

These are good tasting chocolate biscuits with strawberry cream chocolate mushroom tops.

Tiny potato chips in a long tube.  These are chicken flavour.

Hi-Chew chewy candies.  This was a big bag available at Costco once upon a time.

These are more Pocky but chocolate and crushed almonds.

That's just a few of the hundreds or thousands of Japanese snacks you can get.