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| - I honestly gasped when I was wandering around Carlton & Parliament and saw a 'Zakkushi Opening Soon' sign. One of my favourites drink & snack joints in Vancouver (the original Denman location, to be exact) - now in Toronto. I was pretty happy to say the least. After waiting a month or so after their opening and waiting for them to get their liquor license, I finally paid Zakkushi in Toronto a visit.
It's yet another Vancouver import -- but unlike Guu or Kingyo, the menu on Zakkushi focuses on skewered meat grilled over charcoal and it's closer to an actual Japanese izakaya. Most of the items on the menu are around $2 - $4 / skewer and they serve everything from your boring white meat chicken yakitori to beef tongue to chicken gizzard, hearts and liver. If you haven't discovered the joys of beautifully grilled animal offal on a stick, you may not like this place. Of course, they also offer other things like sashimi, salads, deep-fried tapas and some udon dishes - but you're probably better off going to Guu / Kingyo for that. You have to remember that this place is named Zakkushi -- and 'kushiyaki' means 'grilled skewer'.
I say this place is a legit izakaya because it doesn't get anymore 'hard drinking salaryman' than slamming down shochu and beer and noshing on salty, greasy grilled meat. I mean, I noticed a family with a couple kids in tow eating noodles -- which is fine, I suppose -- but this place has never been a 'meal' place for me. It's food to accompany drinking - not the other way around.
Pricing *really* varies here - I mean, they have a combo deal for $10 where you get a pint of Sapporo, tuna sashimi, salad appetizer and edamame. This is damned good value (even for the tapa portions). Sapporo pitchers are $17 and 1L mega pints are $9.50 - so drink pricing is reasonable. But, if you're not careful and perhaps get too drunk, the small skewers at $2 - $4 a pop will creep up on you. They have a bamboo cup at every table when you put your used skewers - my friends and I used to drink, bullshit and fill the cup up completely with narrow discarded skewers. We credit card roulette for the bill and the loser usually ended up paying about $600 for 4 guys - life is good when you can spend the equivalent of two PS3s on purely beer and skewers.
It may seem expensive because $12 will get you an entree at many places, but maybe 3 - 6 skewers at Zakkushi that aren't very filling - however, unlike lame kushiyaki joints, they don't force minimum orders. You can literally order *one* of every skewer on the menu and watch the cook carefully season and grill each skewer (which all demand different cooking times) over the charcoal by eye. Considering the effort and you can sample everything made to order, the prices are totally reasonable. Hell, you can reconstruct a whole chicken in your belly if you order all the chicken skewers.
So ya, this Zakkushi is very much like it's original Vancouver locations. The place is much larger, has fancier decor and service is better. However, it's not quite as fun as the original Zakkushi on Denman which is crammed, the servers are aloof and you are likely to have a drunk bump into you as you try to carefully eat meat off a sharp, pointy stick.
Also, I really don't understand why they played that shitty Euro house music in the background. Guu, Hapa and Zakkushi never had music in Vancouver - have no idea why all three added shitty ambient music in Toronto. I just want to eat and have the din of the crowd drown out my boorish, drunken yelling -- I don't want to feel like I'm shopping at a mall.
But I'm going to give it 4-stars anyways just because I'm happy one of my favourite haunts back home is opened in Toronto. I gave the Denman location 4-stars as well - but that was because it was just short of perfect -- Carlton Zakkushi gets a 'well-only-because-I-know-your-brother' 4.
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