Tokio Pub — Restaurant in Schaumburg Township

Came here strictly for the ramen burger. But first, the logistics. Tokio Pub is located across Woodfield Mall, in the same building as Shaw’s Crab House. They have a separate entrance, but the restaurants are connected together inside, so either entrance would work.

Ambiance: classy/casual. Inside Tokio Pub, it’s quant and small, with a few round tables for larger party of people, a few tables and benches, and three or four high tops near the bar. Decór has Asian influences on it, will some wall posters of Japanese characters and art.

Service: great! There’s a host(ess) that greets you right at the Tokio Pub entrance. On this Friday night, at around 7, we got seated right away. We got seated near the door, and despite the triple-door entrance, every time someone entered the restaurant, there was a brisk Chicago January gust of wind. The server was gracious and offered to reseat us, and we ended up away from the entrance/exit and at the high-table near the bar.

Food: probably the worst out of the three categories. To sum it up, instagram/Yelp worthy pictures, but way too salty and gimmicky. But I understand it’s a fusion restaurant, so you have to be creative with your menu. We went with:

Hot rock with ahi tuna — super-hot rock on a bed of sea salt, you cook your raw tuna on top. Takes about 10-20 seconds to get it to the desired medium consistency. It was fun, but the fun didn’t last too long. Seven pieces, and for the two of us, it was gone in a matter of minutes.

Bang-bang calamari — I’m a fan of bang-bang sauce, and calamari. This appetizer was decent. The calamari had a nice crunch, and the hot peppers added the perfect spice to the dish. Cilantro for garnish, and presentation-wise, it looked great. The sauce was rather salty, and the dish itself, looked like onion rings, as they only used calamari rings, and no tentacles.

Rainbow roll — when I’m at a place that offers sushi, I usually gravitate toward rainbow rolls, because it offered a combination of fish. This one had tuna, salmon, and yellowtail. Overall, it was good. It came with a garnish of sweet sauce which was good.

Ramen burger — this was what we came for. It is a burger, cooked to what you want, for us, medium, with ramen as the top and bottom “bun” of the burger. The ramen was grilled/cooked, and offered barely ample structure, to keep the burger not in a complete globby mess. It came with a soy molasses sauce that was so darn salty. Thank God they gave the two of us a carafe of water, as we needed it. The burger came with almost unsalted fries, which OK. We had to finish the burger fast, as the ramen-bun was getting soggy by the minute. Definitely a gimmicky menu item, worth taking a picture of, but I would not be getting this or really recommend it to anyone.

Big knock-down of stars: when we got the bill, there was a 3% restaurant fee. Upon asking the waiter, he just smirked and said he would take it off. Apparently, as of Jan 2025, they are still charging COVID-19 fees. COVID was ~5 or 6 years ago yo. Imagine the amount of money this place gets from the unsuspecting patrons via this nickel and dime-ing. Look, I am all about supporting restaurant staff and tipping, to what I believe, generously, but don’t impose us these random obsolete fees like you’re a Ticketmaster of restaurants.

TLDR; food was OK. I would not go back again, but I tried it at least. Huge red-flag for subtlety charging a COVID-19 restaurant fee in Jan 2025.

BATHROOM REVIEW: Let’s hope you don’t really need to pee really bad, cuz it’s a long way. There’s a connecting corridor to Shaw’s Crab House, where you go through to the bathrooms. Up a few flights of stairs, then down another hallway, you’ll find the Men’s and Women’s bathrooms. Since the bathrooms are in the Shaw’s Crab House side of the building, it shares the same 50s vibe decór. Inside you will see old posters as decoration, and several urinals and stalls. Everything was clean, including the bathroom stalls. Sit...

Tokio Pub is a nice Japanese fusion restaurant that has great deals. The happy hour is the golden time (4-6pm) to visit as there are a wide range of food and drinks for half off. On top of that, there is a Tokio Pub Match Promotion, meaning that you will get a gift card of the amount you spent at Tokio Pub on the selected day of each month.

The venue... this restaurant has a Shinjuku Golden Gai feel to it, having a retro Japanese atmosphere. The venue is densely packed with tables and chairs to meet the demand of customers streaming in constantly. We arrived at 5pm and the place was already rocking, though not full yet. By 5:30 it was pretty much filled up. However, even though the venue has a high density, it doesn't feel crammed. In saying that, if you are bringing children, be mindful that they will not have lots of room to roam or draw on the table.

The food... straight from the menu you can see that this is a fusion restaurant, fusing Japanese, Latin & American food. There are many dishes which are "tapas" style, small tacos or steamed buns that comes in triplets or quintuplets (5). Hence this restaurant is Asian style friendly, a corporate culture, i.e. food is shared collectively rather than each person order individually and eat their own plate. This is the best way to eat I reckon! It enhances the familial environment and you get to eat more varieties :-)

Our favorite at Tokio Pub is definitely the pork belly buns. Everything on and in the bun is perfect. Who can resist deliciously made pork belly with gooey black and wonderfully seasoned sauce, paired with pillow soft buns?

The sushi here are really good too, fresh ingredients and yummy rice, with equally tasty sauce.

The taco, we are a bit disappointed we can choose regular flour taco, as we are not fans of corn tacos. But the fillings are generous and...

This was a mixed bag for us. On the one hand we were impressed by several bites - the potstickers are delicious with the sauce being possibly the best part and the beignets were delightful - and fully satisfied by the rest - spicy edamame was not spicy but it and the rice it came on were flavorful; the crispy pork ramen was solid with the pork actually crispy and a rich broth. The issue was with the spicy salmon maki roll. To be fair, this was an off menu request. That said, both the standard salmon ($4), tuna ($5) maki rolls and the spicy tuna roll ($5) all led us to believe this roll would be priced accordingly - around $5; perhaps a slight upcharge ($1-2) for being off menu. This seems to be a fair assumption since tuna and salmon are priced identically elsewhere. We got the bill and a very basic, not actually spicy, spicy salmon roll was charged at $14. This charge was similar to the specialty rolls on the menu, which had multiple proteins and many ingredients in addition to being significantly larger. We decided to pay, tip well and leave since we did not ask the price. Upon reflection, I wish we had said something. The server confirmed with the chefs that they would be able to make the spicy salmon roll. The server then came back and said it would be "no problem". If he was planning to charge more than double what similar rolls go for on the menu he should have mentioned this at that time. It is frustrating to have paid so much for ok sushi. It wasn't bad by any means but it was not even close to worth $14. It was basic maki size and falling apart. The salmon tasted fresh but nothing special and the spiciness was not perceptible. I'm disappointed that a fairly impressive first visit was marred...