Tokyo Canteen — Restaurant in District of Canberra Central

This Japanese cafe / restaurant is rather unassuming and you could easily walk past and not notice it. Do this and it's your loss.

Tokyo canteen offers simple yet delightful meals through out the day from breakfast to evenings. The dishes on the menu may be familiar to those who know Japanese cuisine. It's menu is simple and describes the dishes in a rudimentary manner based off ingredients. Similar to the appearance of the cafe / restaurant, you could easily miss the delight ness that's there.

Dishes are well presented with a simple yet visual flair, and include miso soup and other appropriate condiments as required. The flavour is light and well balanced. You will certainly enjoy the meal and want to explore the other options on the menu on a return visit.

There are a small number of Japanese items for sale at the counter where you order your meal.

Seating is limited indoors though there are a number of picnic tables directly outside under shade cloth. The staff will serve your meal to you outside if you're seated there.

The restaurant is located along side the courtyard area outside Supabarn on Eyre street and opposite...

Restaurant has a cute atmosphere but a relatively small dinner menu. This would've been completely fine if each item on their dish was cooked perfectly. Partner ordered the Unagi Don which was amazing with a good portion of unagi. The soya-egg yolk to mix with the rice was a huge plus. The sparkling yuzu-ade is a must try.

The karaage was a let down as it was dry and cooked with a non-traditional batter which made it very heavy. Same with the takoyaki, which was somehow worse as it felt like it was reheated from a frozen batch. The ramen was very questionable. Not sure what noodles they used but it definitely wasn't the normal ramen noodle. Theirs was very, very mushy in texture and still had the taste of the boiling water it was cooked in, which watered down the already weak broth. Minimal bamboo shoots and wood ear strips. Grilled pork belly was too thick making it dry. Also it wasn't grilled on both sides? The onsen egg was good though, yolk still runny, though I would've preferred if it was halved so that the yolk wouldn't drain into the soup. Not worth the $20 - wish I ordered the unagi...

Tokyo Canteen is a lovely, smallish cafe serving Japanese-style brunch food. My partner and I love Japanese food and have visited a few times now. The food and coffee have consistently been good, although some dishes are definitely better than others.

I highly recommend the unagi bowl (eel on rice served with pickles, miso soup and a salad) and the breakfast okonomiyaki (savoury cabbage and mushroom pancake served with a fried egg). The chicken katsu sando has also been delicious at times, although sometimes it can be somewhat dry and bland. Their coffee is also on the bitter side so those with a sweet tooth might be better off sticking to their teas or one of the three flavours of Ramune available.

The cafe itself is beautifully designed and the services has consistently been kind and polite.

(Pictures attached to this review are of the chicken katsu sando and the Tokyo muesli bowl and are from two...