Tokisushi Honten Osaka (ときすし本店) affordable sushi place in Namba

Tokisushi Honten Osaka ときすし本店 is the kind of sushi restaurant that makes Japan such an attractive place to visit. We stumbled upon this small shop in the old part of Osaka near the Takashimaya Namba store. The shopfront is plastered with a lot of information in Japanese (which we cannot read). Fortunately there were some pictures of sushi which were enough to make us stop to check it out.

We found out later that Tokisushi Honten is the main store of Tokushi Sushi, which operates 4 stores in Osaka. We were seated at the counter on the ground floor. It is a small space with a laid back feel.

Tokushi Sushi Menu

The staff at Tokisushi Honten Osaka spoke little English, which was more than our non-existent Japanese language skills. Fortunately they have an English menu. Here are pictures of some portions from the menu.

What we ate at Tokisushi Honten Osaka

Not sure about what to expect, we ordered two platters of assorted sushi. I believe they were the standard 12 piece (1350 yen) and 8 piece sets. We love how directly presented they were. Tightly packed on a wooden tray rather than being spread out to look bigger. Neither was there any flower nor decoration other than the piece of green plastic separator.

Even though these may not be considered premium cuts, they were beautiful, with bright and clear colours. Soy sauce was applied to the sushi with a brush rather than by dipping into a dish, which I think is a more effective way.

We were encouraged by the quality of the standard platters to try some individual sushi items. These included sea urchin and scallop. The sea urchin sushi was good value (330 yen each) but the better buy was the scallop sushi (220 yen each) which was fresh and sweet and as good as any we have tried at fancy sushi restaurants.