ToriyoshiKichijojiyongo

Lunch, food prices are not expensive, starting at 900 cold-2000 cold. The menu is varied but most are chicken. Delicious food, very good restaurant decoration The staff are very friendly. Location is easy to find.

Visited January 2020

Nice ambience in a quiet neighbourhood, facing the park. Lovely food. Reasonable pricing and very friendly staff working. Will definitely come back and highly recommended if you're in this part of Tokyo.

Visited November 2018

Delicious chicken restaurant near the park! Kid friendly during lunch time. Check out the ¥1,000 lunch sets! Seating outdoors is lovely. Indoors is a bit stuffy, but also nice. Try this place!

Visited October 2018

Went to Inokashira Park (south of Kichijōji Station) to view the Sakura which is now in full bloom, and we decided to stop by Toriyoshi to have lunch. We had heard only good things about this quaint restaurant which is located right at the top of the stairs going down to the park. It is in a seclude...d and tranquil setting with a small garden where they have a few tables outside for those who wish to sit outdoors. Appearance-wise it looks to be a very nice and cozy place. We arrived slightly before noontime and had a party of six. We were very lucky as the line was not long at all (most folks were probably already in the park) and we had to wait for only like 5 minutes before being seated. The table we were seated at was long and was beside the bay window which overlooked their outdoor garden. Everything was all set for us to have a wonderful meal. That unfortunately did not happen. They are severally understaffed, and after our waitress initially brought us 6 glasses of cold moogicha (Barley tea) and menus, we were left alone for a long time. In fact a very long while. That didn’t perturb us as much as it normally would, since we were trying to wait as long as we could to order since one more in our party was running late. We had a good amount of time to therefore look over the menu and decide what to eat. First glance is it is a simple menu, with not too many choices. Normally a good sign that they specialize on only a few dishes and they should be really good then. That too did not happen as we had expected. There were several dishes that were already “sold out”… and they happened to be the ones that we were recommended to order! Makes sense though, right? The prices are actually very reasonable- in fact I would even say they were cheap! For a setting like that, in a location like that, once would expect the prices to be through the roof. They were not. That is one surprising and refreshing fact about this place. Since literally half the items on the menu were already sold out (before 12:00pm?!?!) so we chose several other dishes. We heard you must order the chicken wings so we got one order of that which will set you back a crazy 480 yen! See what I mean about the prices? We also ordered one lunch set of Oyakodon, which came with a small salad and piece of tofu for a bank breaking 890 yen, as well as an extra Oyakodon (not lunch set one) for an even crazier 590 yen. Also got an order of fried chicken (karaage) and “chicken balls” (tsukune) which is ground chicken on a stick and is my daughter’s favorite. The girls wanted to try an “oden” type of dish that contained too many kinds of innards to even mention, and the kids had a final request to try the French Fries because if a Japanese restaurant is serving French fries, you just have to order them, right? We were informed the Tsukune would take 20 minutes to come and since we weren’t in a rush, no problem. However, 6 mins later, the tsukune came out. And then the chicken wings and then a few mins later everything else. I do have to say the food came out very fast, which was not expected at all. Maybe they should have spent some more time making the food… My Oyakodon lunch set came with a small salad and some tofu. The salad was very small, and it was not your leafy greens, but stemmy kinda greens which was a pleasant change. The salad dressing was mainly a good quality sesame oil which made the dish pretty yummy. The tofu was soft tofu with some ponzu sauce and it was not good or bad- nothing special about the tofu. Then chicken over rice with egg came. The Oyakodon was NOT good. It had I think it was 5 small pieces of chicken on top, and the dominant flavor that stood out was not what you would expect, which would be a soy sauce/mirin kinda of flavor…it was a “gamy” flavor which was a real turn off. Fortunately there was only a few pieces of chicken we had to deal with. I was really surprised at this dish as normally it is my “go-to” dish in any Japanese restaurant. Heck you can get this at fast food places and it would have been better than what they served. This was a huge disappointment. Only savor was the fact that the price was soo inexpensive. I would have been really pissed to pay like 1500 – 2000 yen for that dish. Thankfully it was only 890. Now for the wings… one dish has 5 wings. The wings were not the drumette and flat wingette style that is normally separated, it was the flat wingette with the wing tip still connected. Normally when I get (or make my own) chicken wings, the tip is discarded and not served- but not here. They served the tip. Initially response is the wing was heavily seasoned, but was also very dry. There is great flavor, but the wings are so small, especially since half of it is the tip part, so the meat is almost nonexistent! That said, if you do come to this restaurant, you should order the wings to try for yourself… they are pretty tasty. The “Oden” style offal dish was just…AWFUL! I tried a bite of intestine and it was just nasty. The sauce was so dark and heavy and how can I say it nicely…tasted like… starts with a “S” and ends with a “T”. The girls tried it and they could not eat it it was that bad. At least I got to eat a gamy Oyakodon- they picked a dish that was really inedible. I didn’t try the Karaage, and was told it was just “OK”. This leaves me to the clear winner of the best thing we ordered…you guessed it- the French Fries! No, I am not kidding. The fries were actually pretty darn good. Nice and crispy, and portion size, for Japan standards, was decent! Had just the right amount of salt on it and they were hands down, the best dish we ate. We should have each ordered our own fries and maybe tried some yakitori instead of what we ordered. Ahh…next time. Well not really. I’d be lying if I said we would go back to this place again. There are just too many great places to eat in Tokyo so they had their shot with us, and…they unfortunately lost us as customers for future visits. Afterwords we had such a great time enjoying the park/sakura we will definitely come back next year. Only we will stay clear of Toriyoshi and try some place else.

Visited April 2016

Don't be deceived by the looks. This is a reasonably priced dinner spot in a prime Kichijoji location. We were recommended the chicken wings which did not disappoint! English menu available.

Visited September 2015