Stumbled across this restaurant when we were eating with J's family at Chili Secrets, an oriental restaurant next door!
Where:
| 9021 Leslie St Richmond Hill, ON L4B 0B2 |
Price: $$
The atmosphere is great – usually Japanese restaurants (the ones with amazingly fresh quality fish) are quite shabby (think the old Gal’s Sushi .. or Kim’s Ichiban or Sapporo Sushi) but Inatei actually offers a little of both worlds ! The restaurant is beautifully modern - but with noticeable Japanese elements.
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| Cute table setup with our salad and miso soup |
All the tables are so cute =, they come with a bamboo place mat and a little teapot for soya sauce
We were really craving ramen that day so we both ordered a bowl of noodles from the lunch combo menu. I got the tempura ramen while J got the pork bone soup ramen. Both come with miso soup, salad, dessert and a choice between a maki roll or hand roll. The options they give you for the maki and handroll are very limited (Salmon, Tamago (sweet egg), tuna, crab, california roll) Substitutions are $1 more so I took that offer up and upsized mine to a spicy salmon maki (my fav!!)
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| Soya Sauce Teapot :) |
But let’s move on to the salad. Now, I love Japanese salad for their dressing. But there’s something about Inatei’s dressing that blows me away. It’s absolutely delicious – sweet and a bit tangy and just so so flavourful. Its by far my favourite place for Japanese salad.
We’ve come here a couple of times a while back and its definitely safe to say that the portions have decreased substantially..
My noodles with J in the back
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| There was around 4-5 pieces.. this was taken after I ate them haha :D |
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| My tempura noodles |
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| J's horrible at taking pictures :P This was pork bone soup. It's funny because I actually liked his soup base better but he liked mine!! |
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| My spicy salmon handroll.... Absolutely delicious and completely worth the mere $1 switch |
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| J's salmon maki - pretty standard: moderate portions of rice and salmon. The salmon was very fresh!! |
My favourite part of the meal though was dessert. Inatei always gives you a little dessert shot at the end of your meal. Over the past visits, I’ve had mango pudding and blueberry pudding but this time I got a lychee pudding. Now if you’re thinking about the snack-pack, supermarket pudding that has a hard, almost jello-like consistency, then you absolutely have you to try Inatei’s puddings. They’re soft and literally melt in your mouth (think Guu’s almond tofu). They’re an orgasm in your mouth, I kid you not.
This time around we got lychee pudding which actually had a real lychee at the bottom of the cup!!
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| Lychee pudding dessert shot |
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| Blueberry pudding dessert shot I wanted the Earl Gray Tea Pudding because from what I hear, it’s absolutely amazing. But, of course fate would have it that they didn't have any prepared that day L All in all, it was a wonderful experience and we definitely plan on coming back here some time in the near future :) Inatei is easily one of the better Japanese restaurants in the area - albeit a bit pricier as well!! |
