culture
Spice City Toronto: Hidden Gem Serves Up Japanese Comfort Food
Kaiju might be hard to find, but it's well worth the effort.
Breaded pork with Japanese curry from Kaiju. Photo by Sarah Efron.
In an empty food court in the basement of a half-finished condo mall hides a gem of a restaurant. Kaiju, located at 384 Yonge Street in the newly built Aura condo, isn’t easy to find. Look for a stairway half a block north of Gerrard, follow the corridor straight and then to the left, and you’ll find Kaiju, one of only two operating restaurants so far in this food court that is still under construction.
The two-month old restaurant is pan-Asian, featuring dishes from Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, but the star of the show is the Japanese curry. Served as an accompaniment to a breaded, sliced pork or chicken cutlet, the curry is milder and sweeter than its Indian predecessor. Intensely thick, you have to eat the curry sauce when it’s piping hot before it starts to turn into jelly. “It’s made of fruits, vegetables, and spices,” explains owner Siak Khoon Chen. “We cook it for two days at a very low temperature.”
South Asian food lovers will also be interested in the selection of dishes from Chen’s home country of Malaysia. While the posted menu only has a few specialties listed, such as the hefty fried sambal udon, a longer printed menu behind the counter offers Malaysian dishes such as hokkien mee, char keow tiau and nasi kampung (aka nasi goreng).
Read the rest at Spice City Toronto.
Spice City Toronto explores Toronto’s great hole-in-the-wall restaurants and strip-mall joints serving food from all corners of the world.