Ronin Izakaya — Restaurant in Toronto

Do not go here!!! Story below: My colleagues and I reserved a table for 8 for lunch and experienced numerous issues during our time at the restaurant. They started out providing only 3 menus for 8 people to share, and had to be constantly flagged down in order for us to try and order. After about 20 minutes of waiting we finally were able to grab someone to take our order. We then waited between 1.5 hours and 2.5 hours for the 8 dishes to arrive. This occurred while other patrons, who arrived after us, had been served and were paying for their meals. The first dish arrived after 1.5 hours, and the second dish 15 minutes later. The third showed up at the 2 hour mark and the fourth soon after except it was a hot dish that had clearly been sitting out for a while and was now lukewarm. We then asked for the remainder of the dishes to be packed up to go, and that took another 20 minutes to fulfill. Eventually 6 dishes out of the 8 had been served. The final 2 from our group stuck around for another 20 minutes to wait for their to-go bags. Eventually they flagged down a waiter who was confused that they had ordered (even though this was the same waiter who placed their original orders), and when they asked for reimbursement were told the 2 remaining dishes would take 3 minutes to be prepared. They waited around and were eventually served their to-go bags except one of the orders was completely wrong and both were lukewarm. The table was given a 30% discount but in my opinion all the meals should have been free due to the lack of customer service, poor quality food, and unreasonable wait time. Take from our experience and avoid this place, which clearly has logistical issues and poor...

Ronin Izakaya is a Japanese tapas bar serving up some delicious Japanese tapas, skewers, ramen, Oden, and don bowls.

The main attraction here is the samurai sword skewers, but we decided to try some tapas and rice bowls. The rice bowls come with a seaweed miso soup. The broth was satisfying and served piping hot. The karaage bowl came with crispy chunks of fried chicken Japanese style drizzled with some tangy soy garlic sauce. The chicken was juicy and crispy on the outside.

My Gyu Don beef bowl was a bit underwhelming. Very small portion of beef and lots of rice. The poached egg yolk was good to eat on the rice. I did find my myself looking for more meat and had to eat some of my wife's chicken. In the picture on the QR menu, there was a pickled daikon salad which we did not receive with our order. It's no big deal, but the menu picture should only depict what is served.

The lychee ebi bomb shrimp was my favorite dish but kind of pricey at $17 for 5 shrimps. Thankfully, the shrimps were gigantic to make up for only 5 pieces served.

The oysters at $0.99 each during 1pm-5pm weekdays is a great deal and went well with our 2 for $10 Asahi draft beers.

I will definitely come back and try the samurai skewer, some yakitori skewers as well. We did notice a lot of menu items were showing sold out. The restaurant was not busy around 4:30 pm.

If you want some delicious Japanese tapas, I do recommend giving this place a try. We were happy with the food, and service was friendly. The decor inside is beautiful with Japanese murals and wooden tables and stools. Makes you feel like you're in a Japan.

P.S. if you check in on Yelp, you get 10%...

A small izakaya that serves ramen, skewers, oden, and alcohol. They have a very small sheltered patio in front of the restaurant.

We ordered 1x Miso Ramen Chicken Soup Base ($19), 1x Miso Ramen Tonkotsu Soup Base ($19), 1x Premium Unagi Don that comes with Miso Soup ($21), and 1x some Blueberry Cocktail ($???). Came with 3x cups of lemon flavoured cold water.

The miso ramen tasted good. The tonkotsu soup base miso ramen was some really good soup, not too oily or too salty. Was just right, in my book. Enough flavor. The fish cake was slightly sweet and chewy. The seaweed had absorbed the soup so it tasted great. The chasu was melt in your mouth good. The green onions were fresh and crunchy. The noodles were chewy and bouncy. The butter added a depth of flavor. Ronin Izakaya ramen certainly ranks higher than other ramen chains in my Book of Ramen.

My friend enjoyed his chicken soup base miso ramen. My sister enjoyed her unagi don and her miso soup. She said the unagi was good, but she's have had better. I wish I tried the unagi don, it was very tempting. She told me that her cocktail was good too, but kind of watered down. There was a lot of ice in her cocktail.

Overall, the atmosphere was chill (playing western/Japanese music and showing anime on a tv). The restaurant was quiet with us and another small party of 2. The food was good. The service was fast and polite. On the way out, they gave me a candy to go...