Torishin

Has anyone been to Torishin Japanese restaurant in Mt. Prospect lately? I read some old posts about this place that are a couple of years old and the post was more about the decor then the food, it sounded like my kind of place, nothing fancy .There web site is no longer up. I'm searching for a good Japanese place that I can go to that's not going to put me in the poor house every time I have a taste for Japanese , which is once a week. I'm getting a little tired of eating at Mitsuwa's food court. Some where in the N.W. burbs would be great. Domo Arigato Gozaimasu.

I went and posted to CH on Torishin a while back - don't think it was two years, but who knows? (I believe it was the post where I stated that a key to successful chowhounding was to embrace the idiot within). It is good, plain, Japanese roadhouse/grill cooking. And the place must be close to 20 years old, so there is that lovely patina.

If I worked around there, I would probably lunch at Torishin once a week. Nice lunchboxes.

this thread needs to be bumped.

Torishin is mentioned extensively here
and per dicksond's response above, his chowhound review here

i've recently discovered my office has an eerie obsession with Torishin's bento boxes. We actually a Torishin "menu holder" and a Torishin "pickup order driver" for the weekly Torishin bento run designated in the office. "Shun" - the menu holder, advised recently Torishin upped their portion (and prices) and they just had a Torishin bento day on Friday so i figure i'd just hit up the restaurant and explorer the menu instead of the bentos.

alas, i still ended up w/ the (sp) bento:

daikon, spaghetti, potato salad, chicken nimono and a small slice of saba. $8.

while the saba is nowhere near the level of sunshine, the rice was indeed pretty, the soysauce chicken stew is about as good as i can make it at home - fish cake, in soysauce chicken stew; must try at home - and the Hispanic business woman in the Lincoln Mark VIII (first American cars to be equipped w/ HIDs) who entered, requested a sit-down menu, received a cup of water, perused the menu then got up w/o saying a word and left, resulted in the perfect combination for a rat raced Wednesday.

Specials on the board:


Torishin and Sunshine are Japanese restaurants you can bring home to meet your mother. You can marry them, grow old with them, sleep with them on a daily basis. While Renga-Tei may be the home cooking of choice for nissei & sansei, Torishin and Sunshine represents all that is good in J-dining.

and yes, that faux wall of empty 1.8L sake bottles is still there...

Torishin
Sub website
1584 S. Busse Rd.
Mt. Prospect, IL
電話 : 847-437-4590
lunch til 2pm

Nice post, Tony. Thanks for the update, though given that Torishin seems to have been doing exactly the same thing for over 20 years, there is no update involved.

Good food, relaxed atmosphere, reasonable prices, authentic top to bottom.

Torishin is a good place for sushi. It’s not super high quality, but it doesn’t charge a super high price, and it has some items that I found quite out-of-the-ordinary, to wit, a bowl of cold, lean pork, sitting on ice, with ponzu sauce for dipping.



It was tasty, but quite unprecedented in my experience.

We also had a whole squid, grilled and sliced and topped with ginger:



Simple, lush and firm.

There are some really expensive items here, but I have no idea what they are:



I like Torishin.

I think those expensive items are sake....

CrazyC wrote:I think those expensive items are sake....

You're probably right: the signs were positioned above a row of large sake bottles.

Perhaps I went on a bad night but, I dont think so.. I arrived Saturday, at 8 o'clock.. There were three groups of two there and me.. I looked at the menu and didnt see the Izakaya.

I did see a board written in Japanese.. I asked my "waiter" what he liked off the Japanese board.. He was not to helpful so I started asking him about the dishes they had.. I decided on the bitter melon with egg dish..

Started with a pork yakitorri that was grill on a cast iron? No charcoal, not even a chargrill.. The sticks arrive with no char, no seasoning and really bland.. A couple pieces of pork and some onion.. The pork was not tender or juicy.. Dry and bad..

Next up was the bitter melon that was out of a can.. The melon was not fresh, it was limp.. It came with some scambled eggs, some tofu.. The whole thing tasted like a bad mexican stir fry with too much black pepper.. No subtle flavors, no flavors besides black pepper..

With three tables in the place the waitstaff still was slow and bad.. I cut my losses and left this place..

Yikes..

As part 2 of our mini Izakaya crawl last week, we hit Torishin in Mount Prospect. On the surface, Torishin appears to be more of a diner than anything else, though beer, sake and soju are available. Its izakaya items are not as deliberately offered as they were at Kurumaya, but after eyeing what the table next to us was eating, briefly studying the menu and asking a few questions of our server, it wasn't long before some good stuff started landing at our table . . .


Torishin - 1584 S Busse Rd, Mount Prospect



Edamame
We each got a little dish of these after we sat down.



Mackerel
Pretty sure this was mackerel. It was well-marinated, oily and intense.



Monkfish Liver
"Foie gras of the sea" was solid, if not spectacular.



Noodles with Roe
This was essentially japchae with loosely broken up roe sacks in it. I think this was a special that was not listed on the menu.



Ground, Grilled Chicken Yakitori
Juicy and a bit sweet, with some nice flavor from the grill.



Natto Maki
There's absolutely no reason natto ever needs to be ordered.



Beef Tongue
Really flavorful and even more chewy. I loved this one, even though it was a bit dry.



Sashimi
Great stuff here. The fish had rich, creamy texture and very clean flavor. The octopus had a satisfying chewiness.



Pork and Onion Skewers (not sure what the dish is actually called)
We saw these being served to our neighbors and had to try them. Inside were alternating chunks of flavorful pork and slices of soft, sweet onion. I believe they were coated in panko. Flavors here were great, and even though my pork was a bit dry, others at the table did not have that issue.



Katsu Don
One of the best versions of this dish I can remember having. The pork was crispy and juicy, the runny egg was a perfect sauce in itself and the sweetness from the soft onion was just perfect. The rice here was great, too. A real winner.



Shrimp Garden (my name for it, not theirs)
One of our friends said he was in the mood for shrimp, which sounded good to all of us, and we asked if they were available. Though there was a bit of a language barrier, chef shortly emerged from the back with 7 large, frozen shrimp. We wanted them fried but chef seemed locked in on frying the heads and serving the bodies as sushi. The end result was spectacular on both counts. The fried heads were light, crispy and bursting with intense flavor. That did not surprise me but the fact that the previously-frozen bodies were so successful as sushi definitely did. This course was a lot of fun.

Torishin is located right next to the place that used to be Flamingo's Seafood (now an El Veneno outpost), which I used to frequent back in the day. I'd seen Torishin and always been curious about it but until this visit last week, I'd never been. Now, I'd really like to go back because a lot of what we had was very good and the place itself is quite interesting. It's not necessarily an easy place for a non-Japanese-speaker to navigate but a little persistence definitely seems to pay off, as I'm sure repeat visits will, too.

=R=

ronnie,

That's a very traditional presentation for ama ebi (sweet shrimp).
The fried heads compliment the raw flesh perfectly.
Really one of my favorite things.

zoid wrote:ronnie,

That's a very traditional presentation for ama ebi (sweet shrimp).
The fried heads compliment the raw flesh perfectly.
Really one of my favorite things.

Oh yeah. I was just surprised to see it done with frozen shrimp (I would have opted for it all to be fried) and even more suprised by how nice the texture and flavor of the ebi was, given its status 12 minutes before we ate it.

=R=

Nice reports, Ron. The ami ebi heads look swell. My favorites. I truly enjoyed my recent meal at the 3rd izakaya in the burb trifecta, Sankyu. A quirky place, as it should be. I'd be interested in your thoughts on that one.

JeffB wrote:Nice reports, Ron. The ami ebi heads look swell. My favorites. I truly enjoyed my recent meal at the 3rd izakaya in the burb trifecta, Sankyu. A quirky place, as it should be. I'd be interested in your thoughts on that one.

We almost got there but ran out of room/time. It was supposef to be stop #3. Next time, it'll be #1...

=R=