Tomikawa Japanese Restaurant
Affordable AYCE sushi from a long-time master of a la carte Japanese meals
Our first visits to Tomikawa roughly 20 years ago were memorable: The Irvine sushi restaurant was more expensive than some nearby alternatives, but served high-quality fish (including great Americanized specialty rolls) while maintaining a comfortable dining space for business lunches.
Fast forward to today and the story’s somewhat different: While the fish quality generally remains high, Tomikawa now serves appealing AYCE sushi lunches ($30 pp) and dinners ($38 pp) in the same space, which feels more spartan than before. As these prices are comparatively affordable at this point, Tomikawa’s lunch and dinner services are frequently overbooked with customers, leading to non-trivial waits and a busy dining room.
The only gotcha is that the AYCE menu is only a subset of the sprawling list of rolls and dishes easily found on their website, so the specialty rolls wind up – like other local AYCE places – looking and tasting like mostly similar permutations of one another. But if you like tuna, spicy tuna, salmon, shrimp, fried onions, and avocados, you’ll have plenty to choose from, as well as a nice (though common) selection of nigiri, hand rolls, and kitchen dishes.
What used to be impressive attention to individual plate detail during Tomikawa’s pre-AYCE days apparently gave way to service in bulk. On one visit, the salmon was a clear standout on quality, while several other proteins weren’t so good. Another time, four separate carpaccio options we ordered – salmon, tuna, albacore and spicy albacore – arrived touching one another on one narrow plate, regardless of who ordered them. That said, each was fresh and distinctive, say nothing of the most sashimi-like one can find at any AYCE place locally without paying a surcharge.
Friendly advice: arrive early and get yourself on the wait list, or expect to wait a while for seats. The restaurant tends to be unapologetic about the long waits, which are after all the result of plenty of demand. Unlike so much else, that hasn’t changed at all in years.
Stats
Price: $$-$$$
Service: Table
Open Since: >2006
Addresses
14191 Jeffrey Rd.
Irvine, CA 92620
949.786.9888
Instagram: @tomikawasushi