Torae Torae experience gets better every week

Izakaya Torae Torae is a prime example of why it pays to be patient while waiting for a new restaurant to find its bearings.

At the one-month mark, the new restaurant helmed by former Doraku chef Hide Yoshimoto continues to improve week after week, causing all my initial reservations to vanish.

It doesn’t hurt that it’s an izakaya with a BYOB policy that has diners creating their own sake tasting sessions.

What made service difficult in the beginning was the combination of small kitchen + vast menu + large groups of enthusiastic diners who turned the act of ordering into a free-for-all. Ah yes, I’m one of the guilty parties. With a menu this large and tempting, restraint is difficult, so early on, there was a fair number of dishes that never arrived, but perhaps missing two out of 20 or 25 share dishes isn’t bad. How can I blame them when I lost count myself?

That sounds like a lot of food, but when it’s this good, you’d be surprised how much you can pack away. On a subsequent visit with just one other person, we ordered 11 dishes and ate most of it.

The setting is warm, cozy and intimate, so you’ll be sitting in close proximity to fellow diners. The sushi bar overlooks an open kitchen where you can see Yoshimoto and his team hard at work. 

Torae Torae has one of those kitchen sink menus featuring just about anything you might desire from an izakaya, with salads, sashimi, sushi, rice bowl, soup, grill and fry specialties. Those familiar with Yoshimoto’s work know he puts a lot of creativity into his work, most obviously with appetizers such as a seafood shooter ($8) that is the equivalent of a nigiri mix in liquid form, with a small dice of oyster, scallop and shrimp, ikura pearls and a dollop of uni suspended in ponzu sesame sauce.

The lollipop roll ($12.95) — no sticks involved — wraps sushi favorites of tuna, shrimp, scallop, crab mayo, salmon and squid in nori and thinly sliced cucumber.

Ahi tataki ($8.95) is one of his signatures, dressed up with sweet onion, wakame, kaiware sprouts and the crunch of garlic chips, flavored with ponzu and finished with zigzags of garlic mayo.

The silky egg custard chawanmushi ($6.50) is divine with its briny mix of shredded snow crab meat, shrimp, uni and ikura, and you can never go wrong with hamachi carpaccio ($11.50) with the bite of jalapeno, sweet miso, ponzu and a hint of truffle oil.

Among grill specialties are thin-sliced roast pork ($5), savory pork belly kakuni ($8.50) that is one of the stars of the menu, rib-eye steak ($14.50) served with your choice of teriyaki or sizzling garlic sauce, and yukari or curry jidori chicken ($7.95). Unless you like the flavor of perilla, stick to the light curry, which also flavors the salt-pepper style deep-fried shrimp ($5.95) that is one of my favorites. I attribute that to my Chinese heritage.

Shrimp tempura ($12.50) that was flabby in the beginning is now appropriately light and crunchy. You may feel better about your diet if you opt for the mixed vegetable tempura ($7.50). The uni and shiromi tempura ($11.50) has yet to win me over.

Nigiri sushi is priced at one piece per order, ranging from $2.25 for scallop or ebi, to $7.95 for o-toro.

Rice eaters can opt for donburi of negi toro ($7.95), spicy tuna ($6.50), maguro natto ($6.50) or a combination of maguro and oozy mountain potato ($7.75).

If you would rather not make any decisions, there are $35 and $60 omakase meals encompassing appetizer to dessert.

For dessert there is locally made La Gelateria sorbet or green tea or black sesame ice cream.

And, if you find yourself low on cash, hold on until happy hour at 10 p.m., when you’ll find appetizer specialties priced from $2 for edamame, $4 for chicken karaage and $5 each for spicy tuna tartare, ahi takaki, ahi poke and a single seafood shooter.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.