Nomé Izakaya

A buck a shuck oysters!  Need I say more?  Pair that with some drinks, and some snacky type food means an awesome girls night out.  We didn’t have reservations, so the hostess said that if we wanted a table for 2, they had one available, but we would have to leave by 7pm (that gave us 1.5 hours, reading reviews, they only give you 2 hour seatings anyways).  But if we chose to sit at the bar, we could sit for as long as we wanted.  Probably not a good choice for 2 short Asian girls, but we managed to get up on those stools….

Nomé Izakaya has a large list of drinks that look quite fun with interesting names, some not so kid friendly.  But kids shouldn’t be looking at alcoholic drinks anyways right?  I ordered a very kid friendly drink named Soho Singapore Sling, flavours of whole lychees, cucumbers and mint leaves muddled with gin, soho and sake.  Very delicious for a hot summer day, what made it better was that I could barely taste the alcohol.  On tap, they also had an interesting beer, an oyster beer.  We were told that it was brewed with oysters, and the shells.  My friend decided to order that to go with our buck a shuck oysters.  It took several minutes to pour, because they said that they didn’t have the right tap for it.  I’m not sure what that means.  In any case, my friend liked the beer, says it reminded her of Guinness.

Soho Singapore Sling

Oyster Beer

We ordered a dozen of the $1 oysters, Malpeques from what I remember.  They weren’t too big, good size for the novice raw oyster eaters, me.  Sweet, not fishy, a bit irony.  There were a bunch of sauces that they give for you to pair with the oysters.  We gravitated to one that tasted salsa like.  I can’t remember many of the other options except for pesto, yuzu, horseradish, regular hot sauce. 

Oysters

Next dish was the Tuna Tango.  Lightly seared tuna with ground daikon, shallot chips, and Nome’s original ponzu sauce.  This dish, I don’t think is worth ordering.  The amount of tuna that you get is so little.  The pieces itself were small, and it was cut very thinly, and there was barely any sear on it.  The upside, it wasn’t fishy.

Tuna Tango

The Marinated Black Cod was very good, black cod that was marinated with a citrus soy sauce.  Again the portion was small, but it was very meaty, and most importantly not fishy, even for such an oily fish.  Not much of a citrus flavour in the soy sauce though.

Marinated Black Cod

The last dish we shared were the Bulgogi Tacos, bulgogi with lettuce, sliced onion, fresh jalapeno, kimchi, Japense beni shoga, garlic mayo and spicy salsa.  This was my favorite dish, although spicy it was not, I did enjoy the garlic mayo, but was a tad salty for me.  I think I enjoyed it the most cuz it was fun.  It would have been even better if they used corn tortillas instead of flour tortillas.  Just a note, one order comes with 3 tacos.  We added a fourth so we could share it easier.  The price of an extra taco was $2.90.

Bulgogi Tacos

In the grand scheme of things, worth it to visit for a drink and the $1 oysters, the rest of the food, not so much. 

Nomé Izakaya

4848 Yonge St.,

Toronto, ON

M2N 5N2

Phone:  (647) 347-7937

Hours:  Monday - Sunday 5:00p - 2:00a

http://nomeizakaya.com/#!/home