Tora Izakaya — Restaurant in Charlotte

Updated: photos from our most recent visit!

My boyfriend and I had a great experience at Tora Izakaya! They have such nice staff here who are friendly and polite. All of the food was neatly prepared, came quickly, and tasted fresh. We ordered the crab ragoons, miso soup, yellow jacket roll, Thai tea, island boy roll, and the shrimp tempura ramen. The ramen had the classic dehydrated ramen noodles which is probably why it is cheaper but it’s a good bowl of ramen! Ours came with roasted corn, bean sprouts, seaweed, fish cakes, a whole soy egg, and green onions. The crab ragoons had pepper which was nice but it was a little too much. Shrimp tempura was a nice crispy panko breading. Fish in the sushi was extremely refreshing! Personally I think they have a large menu with very unique sushi roll toppings and worry they won’t be able to keep everything in stock if other people don’t come and fall in love! I do like that they are very unique without being crazy rolls. They have a full service bar and offer cocktails. They have house sake and draft Sapporo which are two things I would typically order from the bar. They have really good prices on a lot of things but the nigiri price is a little high. We are excited to come back and try...

Okay so I went solo after work and from moment I walked in I was greeted. This was about 130pm. Given a menu and offered a seat at bar. Ordered Bang Bang Chicken Hibachi bowl and Combination for hubs. Didn't wait long. Food was amazing. Now 2nd time visiting which is for this post. Did online order for our entire family. Ordered quite a few dishes for takeout. When we arrived greeted immediately again. Asked if we had an order. It was ready and they checked it as well. When we got home our food was still hot,packaged nicely. Only concern is the broth for was in a Styrofoam cup and melted a little. But that isn't enough to take away a star. Reason being is that all dishes were still fresh, hot, and contained. Ordered the following: 3 Bang bang hibachi bowls ( All were of equal portions with equal amount of protein to veggies) Chicken Hibachi sub noodles Kids shrimp fried rice California roll ( loved that it was in a box 😉) Eggrolls Tonkotsu Ramen ( loved fish cakes 😁)

Overall, do I recommend? YES Will we return for another big order? YES

Now, don't be surprised if they become your new...

After looking at the menu online (which one of the links for the menu on the website are broken), we made the trip out here for lunch excited to get the bento boxes as they seemed like such a great value. Upon arriving and inquiring about them we were told that those are for the online orders only and that they do not offer them to their in store customers. No alternatives were offered other than the normal full price menu. I can’t seem to make sense of how they could advertise this on their website (which had no indication that it was for online orders only) but not offer it in the restaurant? I honestly felt like I was intentionally mislead with their website to think that I would get a great value meal just to be denied what was advertised online. I did end up getting one order of sushi which was slightly above average, but the false promises ruined the experience and led to this feeling like a total disappointment.

TLDR: Menu online is not accurate for what you should expect in store. The business seems to be prioritizing online customers over their dine...