Ju-Raku Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Toronto

We visited yesterday to try out this new restaurant and their $98 omakase menu since not much is known about it! I believe the restaurant is still in their soft-opening phase and honestly, i believe there is a lot of fine-tuning to do especially with this course.

Restaurant itself is really nice looking and aesthetically pleasing. There are several dining areas such as rooms catered for teppanyaki, counter seating for omakase, and regular table seating which i believe is for their regular menu, and even a bar.

The course starts with a sashimi appetizer with scallop slices and a bowl of marinated spanish mackeral paired w/ seaweed. The scallops are bland and doesn't have any taste to it, and we are surprised when they are served plainly without any soy sauce/garnishes other than a small slice of lime which does not taste good with it. The spanish mackeral itself is decent and I enjoyed the texture of it. It is marinated though so i cannot taste much of the fish other than the marinate itself. We are also served a decently-portioned ikura app which has ikura mixed w/ kelp. The ikura is normal and nothing special about it. The kelp however, is a bit fishy and does not taste good with the ikura and it's not a good blend of flavors at all. I think rice will be a much better alternative given the shari is very decent and i like how it is seasoned.

For nigiris, we are served a variety of seafood from shrimps to seabream. Most pieces are okay but a few are seriously lacking such as the tiger shrimp and ika. The ika itself tasted like those you get at an all-you-can-eat place while the tiger shrimp is legit the kind you get from T&T. The shrimp is also served back-to-back with the botan shrimp (which is my favorite in this course) and i find that super strange that 2 shrimp courses are served in 1 seating, and for such cheap ingredients to make an appearance at a 100 dollar course! Other cooked shrimps that i've had are significantly fresher, bigger, and less chewy. I also did not like the unagi piece and it's a reminder of being at an ayce place. I am surprised however that uni is being served, and while it is a good thing, the uni itself started to show hints of being 'unfresh'. The best piece of this course has to be the botan shrimp paired with wasabi stem and is really fresh and tasty. The course ended with this weird hand-held piece of O or Chu-Toro nigiri (sorry - i cannot hear the chef half the time) which is very awkward to eat as it is too big to be bite-sized but cannot really bite off into pieces either. The garnish on this piece is really tasty though but doesn't necessary pair well with the torched toro. A negi-toro handroll is also served and while the chef packed the handroll to the brim, I unfortunately bite hard into a big piece of fish bone and it ruined the entire handroll for me. Handroll also isn't seasoned other than some soy sauce nor can i really taste the toro itself.

Course ends with a regular miso soup and a scoop of ice cream, both of which are very standard at best and doesn't scream omakase. At this price point, other establishments are serving seafood-infused broths and home-made desserts, which is my exact thoughts with the rest of the course. I believe other places charging this price such as ATO, umi, mizu (which is very good imo), MSSM, Kaito (which is way cheaper) are serving more premium and finer nigiris with better seasonal varieties. Several nigiris shouldn't even be appearing at a almost $100 pp course given how basic they are + quality being subpar, and you can realistically get them at your local joint/supermarket for significantly less $$$. Given this is more of a casual place, services are also less dedicated unlike other omakase joints, and my friend isn't even given a water until he asks for it after finishing his mocktail that is way too sweet! Services is okay however, and the host is nice to offer both of us a slice of cheesecake on the house which is tasty also. Teppan looks attractive and maybe will come back for it but def a no...

Visited Ju-Raku this week for a birthday dinner. I understand it only recently opened, however we were not informed it was a soft-opening on OpenTable or by our server. I only saw this afterwards in their IG bio. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in that they're hammering out the minor things, but I did want to leave a review so people know what kind of experience they'll be getting.

First impressions of the interior are great, I like a minimalistic and warm design, although there is quite a bit of unused space in this one so the minimalism ends up feeling a quite stark and as a patron you really feel like you're on display. We could hear everything happening in the halls of the mall as well, I think the restaurant could improve this with some kind of barrier wall/divider at the front.

We sat at a regular table (not their omakase or teppanyaki options). Service was okay, but definitely could use some practice. A handful of the items we ordered ended up not being available, but we weren't told about some of them until other food started arriving. Multiple items were also missed despite the ordering system being digital.

The food itself was mediocre in terms of quality vs portion vs price. Quality wise we were left disappointed by most of the dishes, and perhaps it stood out more because the portions were so small that you are forced to analyse each piece.

The sushi was small, and a little dry. The rice did not seem very fresh. The cuts of fish were very standard, which at $16 for 3 pieces was unfortunate. A $16 bento from an average sushi place in Toronto would get you similar quality but 8+ pieces.

We splurged on some Otoro fatty tuna, but at $52 for four pieces we again were quite disappointed that the pieces they gave us had a lot of sinew in them, which was not ideal. It's not as nice when the fish melts in your mouth but what is left is hard chewy bits. It seems this cut was more of the jabara cut, which usually requires some different prep.

Our beef skewers were dry and overcooked to the point of being a little chalky in texture. The karaage was okay, and the katsudon bowl was decent. Small things in the dining experience are missed like a cup for used skewers to go in, or the second empty bowl for the edamame shells.

Although our experience was not stellar this time around, in general all of these things are fixable, and since we're often in the neighbourhood we look forward to revisiting in a couple months once they've worked out most...

Came here tonight and was extremely disappointed. The decor is very nice, much better than the old O&B that used to be there. But my wife and I were excited to try this as we're quite close by and were looking forward to finding a nice new Japanese Restaurant. We definitely fell for the nice packaging of a really nice decor.

We when we ordered, it was $14 dollars for 4 pieces of tempura that had a batter that was more closely to that of an onion ring, the zucchini inside was raw. The maki has very nice red fish roe, but the wrapping of the maki was poor as the rice fell off at a slight touch. The Ramen had a broth that was more closer to a consomme than a nice deeply developed broth. The gyoza was moderate but definitely lacked the crispness of traditional gyoza, the flavoring was quite blank too. I pretty much use Gyoza, Karage and Unagi as my barometer for the quality of the food as we are of Japanese background and we go to some pretty authentic places quite often. While yes, we didn't expect this to be traditionally good, we were hoping for decently good renditions of the dishes we ordered because we were looking forward to coming back. Sadly, at this price point, it really didn't feel worth it, it feels more like any kind of run of the mill so-called Japanese restaurant, it just has a really fancy bow. The cost for this level of flavor profile and amount is just way off. In all of the times we've gone to Japanese food restaurants, this was the first time ever that my wife was hungry after all of her dishes and really did not want to order anything else.

When it came to the service, the staff was pleasant enough, however, having been a waiter myself in my younger years, not checking on the table to offer water and tea refills was very disappointing, especially when the tea is $4 a cup. But never once did any of the wait staff ask us how our meal was.

TL;DR: Food is mediocre, cost is high, portion size is very small. The decor is very nice. Staff is pleasant, but didn't care to check on us, so just the basic service of bringing us the food and nothing else.

While we were really looking forward to liking this place, we unfortunately left very disappointed and not likely to return. We'll continue going to Il...