Lately, we've been doing a lot of family bonding. Sunday I went out with Hunnie's family to Sauga to T&T and stop by his aunt's nail shop. After not going out so long with his parents, I was reminded of why I didn't enjoy it at times. See his dad is a horrible driver. He's the type that would like anything unusual on the 401; or anywhere, and uses the brakes like no tomorrow. I get motion sickness easily; mainly when I'm hungry, so a car ride with him as a driver is horrible. Secondly, he likes to go off and do things that is not on the itinerary. Instead of taking the usual way home, he decides to take some other route that is close to 40 minutes long. It is not like its a nice scenic route. It was long and very pointless. I wonder when will it be the next time for me to go out with his parents again after this.

Fast forward a few days and lots of Google and Chowhound searches, I found a new place to try. Welcome to Konnichiwa. Get the title of this post yet? As you can tell by the name, it's Japanese cuisine. I was aiming for a place that serves other japanese dishes other than sushi and my searches brought me to either Konnichiwa or Tokyo Kitchen. I let Andy choose this time and since I wrote in the note that Konnichiwa presumably has awesome unagi, that sealed the deal for him.

Konnichiwa was situated on a nice quiet street on Baldwin. I'm loving these small quiet streets in Toronto. It creates such a nice atmosphere, like I'm in a whole new city entirely away from the downtown core. Although I really love the one up in the Yorkville area much more as the decorations from the many smalls shops are a lot nicer. Anyways back to Konnichiwa, when I read the reviews many were pretty positive and supposedly from a newspaper article it is supposed to be on the less expensive side for students to drop in for a quick meal, well people let me correct that statement for you all. Unless you are planning on getting something off the Lunch/ Dinner special, it's not that cheap at all. I would rate it more in the average pricing for Japanese cuisine; you know it isn't going to be cheap if you want quality. Which brings me to one of my pet peeved about people claiming to love sushi but whines about anything either than the 'all you can eat.' Lets leave that for later though since I'm on Konnichiwa right now.

At first when I was heading to the restaurant I thought it was a bar or pub that I was read about earlier, plus the street already had a few so what's one more gonna change. The decor is quite simple with the usual Japanese decorations and the dim lighting. That actually annoys quite a bit since my eyesight isn't very good to begin with so sitting in a dim area is just frustrating. Also, I have to use flash when taking pictures which makes me worry if I'm annoying other diners. My dad also complained about the dim lighting which my mom countered with 'You don't know how to be romantic at all.' lol



My parents. They're blocking the corner seat that they have there. I though its a pretty cute placement.


Most of the diners chose to sit outside so we were left with the inside.


The waitresses.

Now on with the food!
Hunnie ordered a mix sushi dish. It came with salad and soup as well.



His mix sushi dish. It looked real nice and at first we thought it was my mom's tempura dish. This dish was about $17.99. I think its far too pricey since sushi wasn't much and the quality wasn't all that great either. There were a bunch of fillers when the main portion of the dish should've been the sushi. Hunnie didn't like it at all. His order also came with rice.

Jonathan's order.

He ordered some kind of salad that had soba noodles underneath all that veggies. The portion is very big and cost about $5.50. For the size, I guess it was ok pricing. He really enjoyed it.


His tofu teriyaki. About $14 and totally not worth it at all. I guess its because I'm such a big carnivore that looking at that just makes me go bleh. Well with my bias-ness aside, he really enjoyed it. I liked the texture as well and the teriyaki sauce was decent.

I ordered my dad the ramen. The broth was miso and garlic.

About $12, which I think is not worth it at all. Two gyozas were an extra $2. He said it was so-so so I'll take his word for it. Throughout he kept on telling us how we made the wrong decision and should've went to the viet restaurant earlier. lol

Andy obviously ordered his Unagi-don.

I thought it was pretty neat that they brought it out in a box like that. It's like you just received a treasure chest.


I don't remember the pricing but most likely the same as any other japanese restaurants.

My mom ordered a shrimp tempura plate which was around $12 and I didn't bother to take a picture of. As for me, I ordered the Chirashi sushi, $18.99


It also came in a treasure box so it made me feel extra special. Chirashi is basically sashimi on a bed of sushi rice. I kind of wished I didn't get this since it came back with a vengeance about 40 minutes later on the car ride home. Quality wise, this is pretty mediocre. The salmon sashimi was very big and I found a few things on there that I actually enjoy but still quality is just average that I can get at an AYCE.

At the end, I'd much rather go back to Okonomi House or the few AYCE places that we walked past. Especially my dad, a soon as we stepped out and walked past an AYCE his response was 'see see! These one here has pictures not like that place.' I forgot to mention that the menu is very hard to read due to the text the chose and the dim lighting. If anyone wants to check, there is a website.

Konnichiwa
31 Baldwin Street
Toronto, ON
Phone: 416-593-8538

Labels: dining, japanese