Kinjo Sushi & Grill North Hill — Restaurant in Calgary

Kinjo is easily my favourite eat out place in the city. This location and Dalhousie are the two I most often frequent. The prices are fantastic for take out, the fried chicken is the best I've had, boneless, crispy, and juicy and only $1.25 a piece, I normally only get 4 or 5 and that will be enough to fill me, On top of that they have the Onigiri which have the option for 2 for $5. Not as economic as the chicken but a nice snack, great for taking to lunch at work. 2 Onigiri and a piece or 2 of chicken and I'm stuffed. They also have some ok bubble tea, a lot of ice and very run of the mill. I personally don't get it because I don't feel like its worth it but I have friends who swear by it. Be sure to ask for "less ice" they tend to do the bar drink thing where 80% of the volume is ice unless you ask it not to be.

Dine in food is also great, good variety of budget sushi and "fancy" sushi, not the best I've had, its Calgary, what would you expect. Other food is great, lots of options. I'm personally a fan of the Karaage donburi (fried chicken ricebowl). $5.50 last I checked. They've changed the recipe slightly over the years but this was what I would get after a rough day at work to cheer me up. Their ramen is good, mini is $4.5 last I checked, not those big fancy $18 ramen from dedicated ramen joints but good. I used to get a Mini ramen with the Karaage donburi and that would be a full meal and then some for under $10, much better than Mcdonalds and much most affordable.

Service can be a bit slow and I go here often enough to notice a revolving door of staff but they are almost always really busy. I don't blame any worker who can't handle the amount of traffic they get at all hours of the day. Servers for dine in are always very polite and one even gave me some food on the house once which I really appreciated (though that was the Dalhousie location).

Atmosphere wise its very nice, each location is decorated with Japanese ukiyo-e artwork and other lovely pieces. Sometimes I would just sit alone and enjoy the atmosphere with my meal, no additional entertainment required. Booths and tables are well maintained and sometimes you get to see someone's birthday getting celebrated which is always fun. Music is generally pop or hip hop or whatever they play on the radio.

Wonderful place for...

This review is specifically related to the relatively recent (2024-01) breakfast menu feature at Kinko's, a local Japanese food chain.

The proposition is appealing: $5.00 a basic breakfast. How can you go wrong?

Even with the $1.00 coffee and the $2.00 extra toast, it's still a great deal.

In addition to this, the menu offers similar deals for breakfast and bagel sandwiches, and more Japanese forward options such as ohayo, a sushi-like spam-and-egg or spam-and-cheese with miso soup combos.

We tried the basic breakfast. Even with extra coffee, extra egg and extra toasts, this breakfast is an unusually good deal.

No matter how good the deal may be , it can only be good if the food is worth eating as well.

I, for one, was not disappointed.

On the highlights: The eggs had a deep yellow colour and they were tasty. The bacon was tasty but not crispy, perhaps cooked using a different technique. The sausage was dense but tasted good. The salad ingredients were fresh, dressed with something that tasted like Kewpie sauce.

On points to improve: The potatoes tasted like b-class tater tots, ok, but not fantastic. The ohayo & miso soup combo was ok but not great. The toasts were labeled as "sourdough" but really tasted like white bread, which I am good with.

Overall, everything was fresh and served promptly after being prepared.

Our server Joy did a great job. Maybe next time, I will order my eggs over medium.

The 14th Avenue restaurant (there are more than one Kinko's in town) is located in the North Hill Mall. We were seated upstairs, where we had a good view of the Kyoto like mural, a whale-like fish hanging from the ceiling and a picture background wall representing a busy Japanese neighborhood. The unusual decor gave us a bit of an exotic feel, for the time we spent there.

The noise level was low, which I appreciated and the seating comfortable.

In addition, on the main floor, there is a small counter and Japanese food and specialty items shop and a take-out counter, also very reasonable, a Bento box for example, goes for under $11.00.

Simple food, great service and competitive price will not likely go out of style. Good bet, Mr. Kinjo, I...

Aweful management. They came up with some random rule of "Only 4 bills". 5 of us came to Kinjo, 4/5 people ordered the same thing, one beer and one miso, and 5th person ordered beer and spicy miso and some extra food. When we were finished the waitress asked us if we want separate bills, we said yes. They brought one bill and told us we can only split it in 4. After our question what is the problem with getting us 5 separate bills we were told that this is their policy and we have pay bill and split in 4. Asked to get the manager because this we wanted 5 bills, manager came aggressively to us and said he can not do that, we have to pay it in 4. I told him nicely that you have two options - either bring us 5 separate bills and we are happy to pay for our food or we can leave and dont pay. He started yelling that he will call the police because we dont want to pay our bill. We told him go ahead and call the police. Ofcourse that "manager" called security guards from the mall. When they arrived we explained them situation and they were totally on our side, security were even surpriced that there is an issue at all, and told us that they were sorry about this incident. When this "manager" got us 5 bills we saw that he just split the full bill in 5.. which was incorrect again so he was told again to correct the bills and we repeated like 10 times to him that 4/5 of us ordeted 1 miso and 1 beer and the 5th person ordered extra food so split it correct. Manager told us that ok, he will do that but "YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE ANYMORE".. lol..😆 ok, good luck with your business, I hope you know how many asian food places out there.. we payed our bills, ofcourse with "0" tips. p.s. food was ok, so no issues with...