Tomikawa Japanese Restaurant

This USED TO BE the best place for great sushi, saki and prices. Even the non happy hour was great.
Now it’s sushi tastes old and prepped ahead of time. Overpriced. Even the music isn’t as good as it was. .the change is so dramatic that they MUST have changed owners. 5 stars to 2 now.

Nice vibe, good sushi but the service has become horrible!

It is a great place for sushi
I really enjoy the sushi in that place
clean, simple, delicious
this place have a happy hour I think it’s start at 8 or 9 pm to 11pm
If you wanna enjoy yourself go to that place
at least give it a try
the happy hour prices are good, not too expensive, not to cheap.

Sushi Quality: 3.5÷5 STARS
Decent quality, always fresh, large portions, and the garlic edamame is out of this world.
Price: ⁵⁄₅ STARS
E.g: $ 9 for the lunch special I could only eat half of because it was so big!
Service: ²⁄₅ STARS. The wait staff is very very friendly, but be prepared to wait twice as long for your food than at other restaurants, and have to remind your waiter of your order 1 – 2 times. How can a chain owned by the same people as H20 Sushi have such an unresponsive staff?

Tomikawa has been my go to sushi place for about a year now. Visiting it somewhere between 2 – 4 times a month, lunch and dinner.
Initially I fell in love with this place for its fresh fish and low prices. Now analyzing my past few months of experience, I can say that bill went up from what it used to be and the fish quality is not consistent. Still it’s my favorite sushi place in Irvine, well deserving 4 stars. Don’t listen to those who give 2 – 3 stars due to service issues — on average stuff here is not worse than other places of similar price. And if you are willing to pay extra for better service with same or worse food quality — pick any place with $$$$ rating.
Favorites:
— salmon sushi
— salmon carpaccio
— tiger roll
(Yes I like salmon)

Worse service ever… Food is good but their service kills the whole experience. The servers have attitude. I have been here before it was ok but it’s getting worse every time. Come at ur own risk

I used to bring my friends here all the time. we used to share the 2 or 3 combo depending how hungry we were.
Went recently, to find out they hiked their prices, and got rid of their 3 combo, probably because people were sharing, not allowing the business to make more profit. Pretty decent food, service is always kinda slow, got to wait a while for your food, although i dont go as much anymore.

Not sure how the food is, but the service sucked. Walked in on a Saturday night around 6:45. It was moderately crowded, and we were brought to a table as soon as it was cleaned, and we sat there for 15 minutes, and never saw a waiter. We walked out and I don’t think anyone even noticed walked out. Won’t go back, there are too many other Japanese restaurants around.

Servers have no organization or communication. It seems like they are all working independently of each other. One server came right after another to ask for our drink order. Another server didn’t know what roll she was holding and asked me if it was what I ordered. Shouldn’t you know what roll you are sending out?
Management needs to give better direction to their servers. Reverse happy hour wasn’t even a good deal. The food was on par with the price.

I love this place, I have been coming here for two years and i was never disappointed with their quality and taste. They have great menu and amazing happy hour, great prices and good selection of different rolls. I love their Salmon roll, its my favorite one. However, their turn rolls and other rolls such as lobster and crunchy are great. Moreover, staff is very welcoming and service is great. every time i try a new sushi place i come back to this one as the best. I definitely recommend this place and its great for groups!

We’ve been coming here since it first opened and although the server sucks we still like to take our chances and love to hate Tomikawa. So if you want wait for someone to place your order or have an item not show up, Tomikawa is the place for you. We like the food, but you just have to take your chances on the service.
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We’re here again. Why is it this place has no idea how to bring out the order of foods. I always get an appetizer at the end of my meal. WTF?!

No.
Came here for lunch, dinner, and happy hour a few times, but today’s lunch just did it. No more. Got seated for a party of 5 right away. Ordered two appetizers and five rolls. Appetizers came out in an okay time. One roll came out soon after the second appetizer, then maybe 10 minutes later two other rolls came out (one being an easy crunch roll). Thought the last two rolls (none of them being baked) would come out shortly, but no, waited 10+ minutes before I asked our waitress if she can check up on the last two rolls. She disappears in the back and it’s not until about 10 minutes after, instead of letting me know the status, she asks if I’m sure the rolls didn’t come out already. I felt as if my table was being accused for eating two rolls and trying to get more rolls out of it. If you saw the table, everyone was waiting for everyone to get their food before eating. When I told her no, that’s when she goes to the bar where the sushi men are. Another like 7 – 10 minutes, the last two rolls finally arrived. She tells me that they were busy. I’m sorry, but from where I’m sitting, I can see the bar and everything that is coming out. I see rolls coming out, the three out of five rolls from my table were already brought… the last two rolls weren’t made at the same time? If they forgot, you can just tell me that they forgot because I don’t buy the «busy» excuse.
To make it even more unpleasant, when trying to pay for the meal, the tablet they use to run cards wasn’t accepting my card. It clearly stated on there that the transaction was lost. I told her that. She tells me that it’s not accepting my card and if she can have a different card. I didn’t want to use another card, but wanted to get it over with so handed her another card. Same thing, transaction lost. I told her that the transaction was lost. It’s not going to go through. She then goes, oh our wifi isn’t very strong then goes to the front to only bring back another tablet. Luckily this tablet worked.
I think their food is decent, but service like this? No, won’t put up with it. Instead of trying to make your guests feel like they’ve done wrong, if an order was clearly taking too long, try offering miso soup or something to make up for that long wait.
I try not to write reviews like this, but from what I experienced and reading other people’s reviews, clearly there needs to be more staff during rush hours or better training needs to be provided.
P. S. not once did anyone come around to refill our water cups. Isn’t that standard???

My last meal at Tomikawa was back in December 2014, but this return proved to be much better than a previous visit. The menus are visually stunning and the pages are much more organized than before. The presentation appeared up to standard for the Octopus Restaurant chain across California and Unilocal indicates that the change began some time August 2015.
Came through for lunch with a group of six and was pleasantly surprised by the menus and service. Drink orders were promptly placed and we were checked on every few often throughout our stay.
Most of the table got bento boxes with a choice of two items, which comes with edamame, miso soup, salad, gyoza, California roll (2 pieces) and a scoop of rice. You get 11 options to choose from ranging from teriyaki, rolls, mixed tempure or sashimi (additional $ 2).
I decided to go another route and order a few things to share with a friend. To start, we got the yellowtail carpaccio and spicy tuna crispy rice. The carpaccio was BEAUTIFUL. Topped with red and black tobiko caviar, micro greens and edible flowers, the yellowtail was paired with truffle oil, fresh jalapeño slice and yuzu citrus. Perhaps one of the prettiest things I ate so far.
The spicy tuna crispy rice topped with avocado was mediocre. The menu says it’s topped with ranch sauce, but we requested to not have it. The crispy rice was a bit glutinous and didn’t retain its crunch, so the texture was not what I expected. The heat level is very mild for my preference, so the additon of wasabi was much needed.
We also shared the Heart Attack roll (spicy tuna, jalapeño and avocado tempura crunch roll), garlic tuna nigiri and eel (unagi) nigiri. The Heart Attack was very mild. Strangely enough, the jalapenos tasted sweet and the roll as a whole lacked the «attack» I was anticipating.
Although Tomikawa has revamped their menus and appearances, they still lack the presence and flavor I was anticipating. The rolls are more Americanized, which are doused in sauce or stuffed with imitation crabmeat. At least the taste of the sashimi is a lot cleaner than before and service was attentive through lunch. Still the same rating, but maybe a half star more.

Came here on a Monday night for happy hour. It was a bit busy, but they seated us right away. I ordered some of the items which were actually pretty good. I ordered:
Alaskan Roll: really delicious
Snow Roll: fish on top was over done and very hard to chew and the dish was cold
Fried shrimp in jalapeño avocado sauce: absolutely amazing! I would’ve ordered this at least 10 times if I wasn’t full. The sauce is sooo good and spicy.
Sumo roll: delicious. I was getting a hint of mango.
Lion king roll: this was really good as well.
Service was good. A bit weird because we ordered the friend shrimp with jalapeño avocado sauce (appetizer), but we got it after the first 3 rolls.

We came here during the reverse happy hour 8:30pm and onwards. The service was good and everyone was courteous. They did forget one of our order items and we got it to go since we were full at the end. It was interesting our rolls came our first and our appetizer came out last.
What I didn’t like was although things tasted okay, the rolls did not come out looking like their menu photo items. I’ll include a photo of the Hot Roll and you can compare it to their menu photo. The rolls were small and the fried tempura pieces were just powdery?, but I guess with the HH prices it was acceptable. I would probably never come here other than during hh personally.
We got:
Hot Roll-​dinky
Lakers Roll– meh okay. had fried onions on top of it
House Roll– better than lakers roll
Mozzarella tempura– mozzarella wrapped in nori (seaweed) then deep fried in tempura and served with ranch. This tasted pretty good but totally not something I’d expect at a Japanese sushi restaurant.
Tea– they only serve barley for 2 bucks.
Everything California roll style (think imitation crab and mayo and avocado) with very little albacore or tuna. Very not traditional Japanese style, perfect for non raw eating folks. We also ordered fried tempura mozzarella sticks just to try it. It’s not a bad combination although it sounds weird, deep Fried mozzarella wrapped in nori and breaded.
Also I specifically asked for hot tea, green tea, and they gave me hot barley tea. That’s fine if you don’t have green tea but I would at least had wished the particular waiter would have told me that before he brought me a cup and charged me 2 bucks for it.

Tomikawa sushi are the best, their tuna sushi and salmon sushi are awesome, the Manager is very nice and friendly, the crowd are excellent and their service is very good. I’m sure I’ll be back with my family .
Our friend Pam, recommended us to try it and it was a wonderful experienced.

This place has small menu but very generous portion for bento box. My family have dined here twice and both times we left feeling very satisfied. I usually share the bento box with my daughter and she eats the rice. I just finished whatever that she doesn’t eat.
The sashimi is pretty good quality. It’s funny that they charged you more without the sauce. Both times we ordered the yellow tail and salmon just the sashimi and not their special and they charged us $ 4 more.
The place is very spacious. Slow service but decent turn around. It’s a good spot for not wanting to drive too far.

They were able to seat a party of 6 in about 15 minutes without notice, which was appreciated. It’s very spacious inside but surprisingly, it was decently packed. It looks very elegant which makes you think the prices will be high but the prices are decent as well.
We ordered:
salmon sushi
squid sushi
yellowtail sushi
spicy tuna roll
popcorn shrimp appetizer
Vegas Roll
Caterpillar Roll
Mexican Roll
Lion King Roll
kid’s bento box-​chicken
Brick macaron ice cream
It took them a while to take our order and took even longer for the food to start rolling out. Speaking of rolling out, the rolls, which make or break a sushi place for me (when I’m not going exclusively for sashimi) were good. They were not salty from being drenched in sauce, nor were they bland from a lack of tasty ingredients. The Vegas Roll was my favorite. It was piled high and yet, was the perfect size to stuff into my mouth for an explosion of flavors. I’m not sure why it’s called Vegas-​maybe it makes you feel like you’re taking in more than you can handle but you dgaf and do it anyways. Nonetheless, I did not have ANY regrets eating it, unlike when I go to Vegas.
They can take better care to refilling water and giving out clean plates. ³⁄₆ of our plates were dirty but we used them anyways after wiping because we didn’t want them to put off taking our order.
The brick macaron ice cream, green tea flavor, was good and not too sweet-​just the way to indulge in dessert. It was a nice contrast from ordering just green tea ice cream, since it has that extra crunchy texture added to it. For those with sensitive teeth-​do not order this since you have to bite into it – my mother had a difficult time eating it.

They have a pretty good lunch menu so I’ll be back!
2 items that you can choose from in your bento box. It comes with 2 california rolls, rice, salad and miso soup. $ 8.95 ish.

Decent prices & food/​drinks for happy hour. which would be the only time I’d ever come back here. Sushi tasted alright. I wasn’t a huge fan of how «saucy» some the sushi were (aka mountain roll). It overpowered the fish taste. You know what I mean?! However, the Mexican roll with cream cheese was really plain tasting (not recommended). Weird? Also, I didn’t like the hint of wasabi taste on the sashimi sushi (it was hidden under the fish). But, that’s just me! The mussels and the salmon carpaccio are delicious though!
The $ 10 lychee breeze soju was good too. It was a good size for 4 people. Soju was light. Nothing too crazy. Service was good for a slow night as well. MAYBE I’ll come back. I don’t know. Still debating!