Takufugu opened recently and is located in a very small mall on No 3 Road, Richmond.  After parking, we found the sign for the restaurant but we couldn’t find the door.  Ha ha!!!  After looking around a bit, we finally came to a wall with a giant wooden front door.  The outside was completely covered so we didn’t know what we were walking into.

Upon stepping through the doors, we were greeted by a nicely decorated room.  The Japanese style decor was very classy.  They also had two private rooms for small parties.

I really liked the clean seafood tank at the back of the restaurant.  This restaurant had only opened for 1 week when we visited.

According to the owner, they ship in fresh seafood and Japanese wine from Japan every week.  This means that their seafood is fresh and high quality.  However, it also means that you can expect higher prices for the meal.  The wine comes highly recommended but we didn’t sample any.

Our place setting was very cute. They had cheery blossoms printed on the place mats and the chop stick holders.  I really enjoyed the tea because it was Japanese matcha tea but it didn’t have any tea leaves in the cup.  This is great because I don’t like drinking tea and ending up with a mouth full of tea leaves.

We started with the smoked oyster salad.  iPanda loves salad and I was also curious about the smoked oysters.  When it arrived I was very surprised by how small the oysters were.  They were fairly salty and tasted more like dried oysters than smoked oysters (is there really a difference?).  In addition, the salad dressing was super sour.  I love sour stuff so this was no problem.  There were also some small tomatoes in addition to the garden green vegetables.

The second dish to arrive was the assorted sashimi.  This was served on a plate of ice and had two pieces of each variety (except the shrimp which only had 1 piece).

My favorite was the toro because it was soft and fatty.

The two pieces of scallop was placed on top of the ice.  There was also some fish roe on top.  The taste and texture is very different than what we are normally used to having in chopped scallop rolls/cones because those are usually mixed with Japanese mayo.

The two sashimi that I didn’t enjoy was the shrimp and the squid sashimi.  Both of these are slimy in texture and takes some getting used to.  The weird thing about squid is that it is also chewy.  I’ve tried it multiple times but still don’t like the taste.

We ordered two rolls as well.  I had a craving for chopped scallop after eating the giant scallop sashimi.  In addition, we ordered their california roll because the owner said that their california rolls are made with real crab meat and not imitation crab.  

The ingredients were definitely fresh.  However, there wasn’t an obvious difference between california rolls with imitation crab and california rolls with real crab meat.  The only difference was that the texture of the real crab meat is smoother.

Both rolls were good but they didn’t make any twists to the original versions.  Overall, it was a good dinner with very fresh seafood. Expect to pay higher prices for the nice decor and fresh imported seafood and wine.  But in the end, high prices just means high quality~  Give it a try if you are in the area!  It’s an interesting Japanese dining experience!