Torarenbo Japanese Restaurant: Lobster sashimi

I've eaten at Torarenbo Japanese Restaurant more than a handful of times for lunch and dinner in the past few years. A few years back it used to be all Japanese employees now replaced by Chinese servers, but I think the chefs are still Japanese.

The bento boxes and lunch combos are solid at Torarenbo but this post will be on a dinner experience.

I've tried grilled ox tongue at Marachu Japanese BBQ and Guu at Aberdeen both of which tasted really good so I was excited to try Torarenbo's version. Marachu definitely made it best because the ox tongue here was not tender enough, did not come hot and was difficult to chew.

Left to right: grilled ox tongue, grilled fish, mango roll

Honestly don't remember the name of this roll but you can see the ingredients inside are shrimp tempura, salmon, cucumber, and synthetic crab with smoked salmon on top. I liked this roll better than the mango roll because there were more ingredients compared to more mayonnaise sauce.

Our server told us of a special they had for a lobster combo ($75). The lobster meat will become lobster sashimi along with an assorted sashimi platter and the lobster shell will be used to make a soup served with udon.

The presentation of the platter was very nice but there was only a small amount of lobster (the top right of the plate under the salmon caviar). The lobster sashimi was not in slices but cut into very small bits as if it was blended. The other kinds of sashimi were quite fresh (except for the arctic clams) and I enjoyed the scallops.

Lobster sashimi platter

Lobster sashimi is the pile on the right

 I didn't take a picture of the udon but basically it came as a big pot of miso soup with some lobster shells, udon and seaweed in it. The taste was mediocre. I will not order this combo again since I liked the ingredients that were complimentary to the lobster better than the lobster itself!