Tono Izakaya Penang — Restaurant in George Town

Went there quite sometime ago, now only remember to put a review.

Food: I only like 1 dish which is the first photo, can’t remember what name that is, but the portion is way too small for the price, I can totally eat two sets myself with no issue (too expensive tho so nope) The sides are pretty good, love the takoyaki which I usually not a fan of. Pickle is pretty sour even for a usual pickle goer (me).

Sashimi, two out of three slices have bones in it, that’s terrible, never had that issue in my life, no matter cheap or expensive Japanese shop I went, no one ever left bones there. They did gave another set as replacement, but quite phobia edy.

Service: Only 1 manager(?) looking person has great service. The rest seemed pretty untrained. We are still eating the last piece of food and chatting with each other, but they will just hop in and interrupt: “Can I clear the space?” and proceed to take the items over us before we permit it (while we are still eating, so they just slide the tray out from under our chin) quite irritating when it happens three different times with three different people. We are still eating, chill.

And while we do the post and redeem thing, since the food was cleared away before our permission, some of us don’t have food photos to use. And it wasn’t specified that we MUST use food image (we took photos of the environment instead) One staff got pretty… annoyed(?) and quite harsh when he tells us no, at least the whole table felt the intimidation. After we clarify the situation, he went to ask the manager and the manager says it’s ok to use non food photos. And the internet is quite slow for some of us, while it’s loading, he just came by like a discipline teacher: “DONE?” I thought I booked a slot at a pretty good Japanese restaurant, but at that moment I felt like I got an impatient hawker stall uncle treatment.

Around RM70 per person. So gotta rant this out, I didn’t pay this amount for this level of experience. 3 star solely for...

Located just outside of the UNESCO Heritage Core Zone at the midpoint of a lesser known street called Tye Sin not far from the bustling night food hub on Noordin at McNair. Parking is a problem here.

The familiar sounding name is attributed to their sister restaurants in TTDI and Publika in the Klang Valley (where it all started). Mid week patronage was robust so reservations are recommended especially on weekends. Very narrow main restaurant where counter seating is available with a more spacious annex. Action vs Privacy - you pick.

While the name izakaya refers to a type of Japanese bar in which small, typically inexpensive, dishes and snacks are served, Tono does not come cheap given its more “fine dining” approach.

Tried Shima-aji Sashimi, Crab+Corn, Marinated Okra, Unagi Sando and 7 types of grilled skewers including some Wagyu. Definitely some favourites there like the wagyu, crab and unagi. Less impressive were the vegetable skewers (overcooked), okra salad (too slimy) and tiramisu (chewy?)

Service was fine at the start when all the cold dishes were served very promptly including the sake nicely warming up in hot water. Then there was a curious break of about 30+ minutes before the skewers were finally served. I had to ask the server why. But they did the wagyu and liver skewers right. Both were moist and delicious.

All in all a pleasant albeit premium place to have dinner in the...

My wife and I entered the restaurant at around 10.15pm the night before. Our intentions were to get takeaway; our orders were skewers and a salad bowl. It was our first time coming to this restaurant, so we wanna try the skewers.

We didn't get the name of the person who had approached us, and we can safely assume it was the manager on duty for the day. Anyway, he offered us to have a seat while waiting for our orders to be ready. While we were seated and waiting, a waitress came over with 2 glasses of water, then about 5 minutes later, the manager came with x2 chawanmushi, and told us it was complimentary and updated us on the status of the skewers (estimated waiting time).

This kind gesture definitely caught us off guard; we thought that the x2 glasses of water was good enough, but we totally did not expect chawanmushi to be offered to us at all. We did not even dine in, just ordering takeaways, hence we were really lost for words (in a good way of course!)

We would like to thank the manager and the team for their effort in making our waiting experience a wonderful one, and the food that we had ordered for takeaway were all excellent stuff! We had no complaints about the food and would definitely visit this restaurant for dine-in soon! Very meticulous service and it's hard to find such a standard of...