Toronto’s cheapest beer may be tucked away in this ramen shop

A humble ramen shop in Toronto is, hands down, providing the city with some of its cheapest beer imaginable.

Tondou Ramen, nestled in the heart of Toronto’s Little Italy, might be the last restaurant you’d expect to find in a neighbourhood built on San Marzano sauces and salami.

However, for close to a decade now, this corner, with capital ‘I’ Italian neighbours like Café Diplomatico, Sotto Voce, and Bar Allegro, has been a go-to space for hiding from the cold or patio hangouts during summer days.

In keeping with the communal atmosphere of Japanese cuisine, Tondou is now miraculously offering $3.95 frosty mugs of their in-house beer till the end of summer.

For reference, the average cost of a pint of beer in a major Canadian city is $10, which, in recent months, has been a contributing reason why the city’s restaurant and nightlife culture has been, bluntly, dying slowly.

With the great (but brief) Ontario summer halfway done, Tondou’s team sat down to weigh in on how crucial it is to keep options within reach for clientele, as the act of grabbing a bite and a beer in Toronto now lingers behind a huge paywall.

[Tondou Ramen’s house beer, looking immaculate, and immaculately priced at $3.95]

“Tondou is Okinawa style, but built for Toronto, as over there, it’s always hot, so it was a perfect fit. We have so many local neighbours, and we want to support them, while also getting the attention of new customers. When we can do that with something priced well, we have a better chance of non-Japanese clientele having a new place to go,” Yuki Takahashi, manager at Tondou Ramen, told INsauga.com.

The beer itself is a locally brewed pilsner, meant to echo the cold, golden, and easy-drinking Shima beers found in Japan.

Takahashi noted that since sneakily dropping its beer cost, Tondou’s longtable patios, which mimic Japanese beer gardens, have been packed with locals and new faces, all of whom are ordering round after round and pairing it with Japanese bar snacks, which this ramen corner excels at.

It warrants attention that Tondou Ramen gained a shout-out in the Michelin Guide, with Chef Braden Chong of Mimi Chinese fame stating that the perfect solitary dining spot in Toronto was “Tondou Ramen — nothing like slamming a bowl of ramen with an oversized Orion beer in solitude with some Japanese City Pop playing in the background.”

While its ramen is the star of the show (it’s in the name), Tondou also excels at other Japanese fare, and on top of criminally cheap beer, Takahashi is pairing it with bites like nanaban chicken, chicken karage, and a pork tamago sando, a blend of savoury pork, fluffy steamed rice, and a Japanese omelette in a seaweed wrap.

[Cold beer, Nanaban chicken, Chicken karage, and a pork tamago sando at Tondou Ramen]

Oh, and there’s also a knockout cold noodle dish that is being pushed alongside the summer beer bonanza as well.

“So much of the style of Japan, its culture, is to bond as often as possible over food and beer. A lot of people in Canada get this idea of Japan traditionally from movies and TV. We wanted to provide a different image here, a sense of the real Japanese style, which boils down to good beer, good food, and spending time with friends outside,” says Takahashi.

This ethos is so fundamental to Tondou that the very beer mugs that slide across your table — which cost only cents more than bus fare — are inscribed with the words (in Japanese) ‘When we cheers, we are family.’

“There is that lingering spirit there, this undercurrent, of trying to get people to come together,” Hidetaka Ishii, who runs content creation at Tondou Ramen, told INsauga.com

[‘When we cheers, we are family,’ seen on the left mug at Tondou Ramen]

As for the shelf life of this promotion, its initial announcement video on Instagram cheekily stated that they’ll stop running it ‘if’ the video breaks 395,000 views — a wink at the $3.95 price point.

 

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A post shared by Tondou Ramen (@tondoutoronto)

However, both Takahashi and Ishii know of the importance of keeping things accessible; otherwise, their entire cultural community focus would be moot. As a result, both stated they intend to monitor the outlandish summer beer pricing and will see if they can run something similar during their far busier winter season.

This, in turn, will keep Takahashi’s vision of an authentic and affordable experience consistent, with Ishii further driving the point home, stating, “Yuki [Takahashi] really wants to share the Japan that he grew up in, not this romanticized version, but something really human.”

[The pork tamago sando, ready for the walk home if you aren’t already full] 

As for where that comes from, despite Tondou being built on the subtropical vibes of Okinawa, Takahashi aims to blend the culinary staples of the region with the social sensations of his home Prefecture, Okayama, well north of Japan’s southernmost island, around which Tondou bases its flavours.

Okayama itself is a huge array of fishing towns, anchored around Okayama City, so for Takahashi, who grew up in these hamlets, Toronto is his first taste of the big city, and as a result of the noise that comes with a big city, he wants to help people slow down and enjoy some small-town hospitality.

[Tondou Ramen’s long-standing corner shop, at College and Clinton]

“It’s about mixing the styles; if I’m bringing something in the Japanese style here, and people respond to it, you bet I’m going to bring some of the Canadian style I’ve learned back home too when I visit.”

Tondou Ramen’s singularly exceptional beer price may only last for the summer, but its singularly exceptional hospitality is evidently year-round.

You can find them at 596 College St. in Toronto.