TORO Japanese Sushi — Restaurant in Victoria

Guys, I’m a starred local guide, and I don’t normally post one star comment. But this restaurant definitely needs improvement! Let me explain. Don’t you think a restaurant with 99% five star comment is too good to be true? Even extra fancy restaurants would have four stars due to the price of the meal, or wait time is extra long etc. So, I was persuaded by the five stars, I went to the restaurant and I regretted. I didn’t see the picture that “you can get a desert by leaving a 5 star comment” until now. For a fancy Japanese restaurant like this, $40 per person is minimum if you want a decent dinner. Those $20-30, $30-40 probably ate half of a meal. Many 5-star posts are not from a verified local guide. They are people who has a google map account and wanted a desert. Come on, it’s a desert! I don’t blame them at all, but it gives the restaurant extra credit that they shouldn’t have. Talking about the food. It’s really ordinary food. It the same grade of takeout sushi but with fancy ingredients and extra extra price tag. The sushi rice was loose. The fish/scallops portion was so little compare to the rice. The sushi vinegar was a bit too much (only a little bit). I decided to cook oshi sushi tonight myself because of the disappointment. Not everything is bad. The tuna sushi with Avocado sauce on top was good. Still, the rice should be reduced by 1/3. We went to this Toro restaurant with the expectation of Nori in Nanaimo (that’s what it was advertised that the chef or owner was from Nori), but the actual quality was disappointed. I believe they must have hired big volume bloggers from Pinterest, google maps or Little red book. I wish one day they can have the same standard...

2nd time going to Toro, Sashimi is very fresh! And aburi is delicious!

I also ordered the Ramen and tried it with the A5 Wagyu add on but was disappointed.... The A5 was not prepared the way I expected.

Service was kind of brutal, waited maybe 30-40min for our order. This was about the same wait for the other time I visited too during lunch.

Hopefully things will get better.

Update: Here are some details:

1. Service was pretty slow, Ramen came pretty quickly but the Chef's Raft took much longer, close to 30-40min after the Ramen was served.

2. The addition of the A5 wagyu to the Ramen (at $22 add on) felt underwhelming. I was not expecting it to be served raw as if it was for Pho. Was expecting a thick piece of wagyu seared like Cha-Shu.

3. When ordering the Chef's Raft, I was not expecting to get any raw oysters on the Chef's raft (as both me and my fiancé are not a fan of raw oysters). BUT that might also be my fault for not letting the server know when I was ordering. I Was just not expecting raw oysters to also be part of "chef's choice sashimi" selection.

4. The aburi was really good, the selection of sashimi was good to, but a small picky thing I would point out is serving both Tuna sashimi and Tuna Tataki as well made it feel like you ran out of ideas on what sashimi to serve.

Outside of these couple thing, overall was not bad. Will definitely give it a try again...

June 2024 update: a slight decline in quality of the dishes sush as presentation and many higher quality fishes are constantly unavailable. They also started charging "hot kitchen fee" if you order anything beside sashimi, raw or sushi. I guess sushi is made in the "cold" kitchen. Some servers had no idea what some of the dishes are when asked. They need to hire more people because i feel like the servers are overwhelmned during peak hours. 5 to 3 stars.

Table for 2: $300 ish including tip, drink and Waygu dish.

Table for 4: 500ish including tip, Waygu and drinks

Positive: Interior and atmosphere is excellent, trendy but high end Japanese restaurant. Lots of space in between tables. Booth tables are available.

Service is excellent, always ready for recommendations

Food is fantastic. Possibly better than Yua Bistro, I would say the best in town for now. There is depth of flavours. Presentation is how Nubo restaurant look like when it first opened, very colourful and your eyes salivates by just looking at the dishes.

Prices are reasonable with the current food prices.

Lots of drink selection that are not available in the liquor store, especially concerning Sake.

Neg.:none

Food for thought:bring lots of friends to spread the cost, try their Foie gras dishes, and try out some of the expensive sakes that is hard to find in Canada. Good place...