Totoraku

Yodo Station on the Keihan Electric Railway line connects Osaka City and Kyoto. The Kyoto Racecourse is located on the east side of this station, and on weekends when horse races are held, the area is crowded with horse racing fans waiting in line. Other than that, however, there is nothing that catches the eye of tourists, and it is a quiet area where one can feel the daily lives of the locals.

In this quiet residential area, there is a restaurant famous for its seafood bowls that is often featured in blogs and magazines. There is a…

Totoraku｜Seafood bowls regularly featured in magazines…A wide variety of menu items with excellent cost performance

Sushi rice bowl specialty restaurant Totoraku is located on the main street west of Yodo Station, but it is a small restaurant that you might pass by if you are not careful. The restaurant is long and narrow in the back, with only nine seats at the counter. There are few eat-in customers even during lunch hours, and the locals seem to use the restaurant mainly for take-out (all menu items are available for take-out).

There are more than 30 types of seafood bowls on the menu alone! You can enjoy shrimp, crab, sea urchin, salmon roe, and more, with prices starting at an impressive 550 yen!

The first thing that will surprise you at Totoraku is the abundance of items on the menu. From the standard tekka-don, chirashi, and anago-don to the original salmon cheese-don, squid kimchi-don, and torotaku-don, there are more than 30 types of seafood dishes to choose from.

Another surprise is the price of the rice bowls. The cheapest one is only 550 yen (tax not included). Of course, the price of a bowl of rice topped with sea urchin or other high-end ingredients will be higher, but the fact that most of the menu items are under 1,000 yen is a strong point compared to other restaurants’ kaisendon.

Let me introduce a part of Totoraku’s seafood menu below (all prices are exclusive of tax).

• Snow crab and salmon roe rice bowl: 1,000 yen
• Eel bowl: 1 slice of eel, 650 yen; 2 slices of eel, 1,250 yen
• Top Chirashi: 930 yen
• Shanghai fresh rice bowl 850 yen
• Shrimp bowl – 830 yen
• Yamakake Negitoro-don: 650 yen
• Large bowl of vinegared rice: +50 yen

Tuna 2-color bowl: Totoraku’s famous bowl of rice to which you can enjoy both red meat and fatty tuna at the same time.

Among the many rice bowls on the menu, I ordered Totoraku’s cheapest menu item and specialty, Tuna 2-iro-don (two-color tuna bowl) for 550 yen. Please take a look at the picture first…

The red tuna and negitoro (negi tuna) heaped high on top of the bowl…the contrast of red and pink is stunning. As one might expect, a bowl of 550 yen is not the size of a regular bowl (about the size of a small udon bowl), and to be honest, describing it as “dekasuke” in this respect is a bit of an exaggeration. However, even if we exclude this, the fact that this much can be made for 550 yen is enough to be featured in a magazine.

You can serve it as sashimi with soy sauce on a small plate, or pour soy sauce over a bowl of rice and shovel the whole rice into the bowl… whichever you choose, the freshness of the tuna will create a blissful moment in your mouth.

Just one word of caution. Don’t eat all of the shari with gusto. Ideally, you should leave just half of it. Because there is one more highlight of Uoraku’s bowls…

Kae Neta: Totoraku’s unique system of changing additional neta (ingredients) quickly turns a two-color bowl of tuna into a bowl of salmon and salmon roe!

In fact, Totoraku has a system called “Kae Neta,” which allows you to add an item to your bowl of rice in the middle of your meal. You can enjoy more than one type of tuna in a single bowl. If you have the stomach and wallet to spare, there is no way not to take advantage of this system. I definitely recommend it!

This time I added the neta to my salmon ikura donburi for 550 yen. The price for the additional neta is 200 yen minus the cost of the sushi rice from the bowl.

A seafood version of oyakodon. The three kinds of ingredients are fatty salmon, crunchy salmon roe, and a little bit of negitoro left on top of the vinegared rice. Drizzle soy sauce over the top of the three ingredients and eat the entire rice…a dream come true for those who love fresh fish.

Who else would like to fill their stomach with a bowl of seafood without worrying about the price? To get to Totoraku, walk 3 minutes from the nearest station, Yodo Station on the Keihan Electric Railway line.

Now, here are the details of the restaurant…

P.S. In Kyoto, there are also stylish sushi like this…