Takumi located at Finch and Leslie is a Japanese AYCE BBQ restaurant. The unique concept is that you grill your own meats. This particular location is actually their second location where their first location is in Mississauga. The restaurant is open daily starting from noon till late (11pm to midnight) where it gets extremely busy during the day (especially the weekends). Reservations are only available for parties of 6+. The space is accessible where are private/semi-private booths for groups of 4 or less. Seating time per table is 2 hours only where the last order is taken 30 min prior to the end of your seating time. The seating limit is strictly enforced due to the busyness of the restaurant.
Price wise, for dinner, the AYCE is $42.99 from Mon to Thurs and $45.99 from Fri-Sun and the holidays. Children ages 4-10 are charged $22.99 and toddlers up to the age of 3 eat for free. Moreover, there is a senior discount as well ($3 off).
For dinner, the menu is sorted into beef and lamb, pork, chicken, seafood, vegetables, appetizers (prepared and already cooked foods), rice, noodles, soup and desserts. In terms of the beef, the prime beef steak AAA is limited to 2 pieces per guest. Other beef options that they offer include the marinated beef short rib, boneless beef short rob, beef brisket, and beef tongue. For pork they have both the thin and thick pork belly. They also have chicken wings and chicken cartilage. Seafood wise there is both garlic shrimp and sake-marinated clams as well as cheesy muscles and salmon fillet. Veggie wise there are items like shishito peppers, enoki mushrooms, and pineapples. For the appetizers the standouts are the taco beef spring roll as well as the seaweed salad. Lastly, they have a daily dessert that is not listed (your server will let you know what it is that day).
I dined at Takumi recently on a Friday for dinner where I was able to make reservations in advance. Our table was ready at 6pm where there was no line ups yet. Sitting down at our table, our server informed us of the 2 hour seating limit and mentioned that she would be the one taking our orders. Our table had 2 grills which was great. On the table you also have a variety of condiments to place onto your sauce tray to dip your meat and veggies into. The time it took to order until the time the food came out was reasonable. We were able to order 3 times from our server before being told that it was time to order dessert as our seating time was almost up.
Standout items included the boneless beef short rib, marinated chicken wings, garlic shrimp, and the prime beef steak. The taco beef spring rolls were also great as well. A house salad is definitely needed to cut the richness and fattiness of some meats. The daily dessert was a taro soft serve which was tasty as well.
Service was average but it should be noted that each server takes care of several tables, often having to place multiple big orders at once as well as clear tables. By the time we left the restaurant there were lots of people waiting for a table.
Overall, a good AYCE Japanese BBQ experience! read more