Tokiwa Sushi

Keep it simple, keep it awesome!

This might be the best kept sushi secret in Vancouver. Authentic Japanese rolls hidden away on Oak st. The water chestnut is a great addition to the Cali roll. Great service and a good price. The perfect quaint mid week dinner spot.

–authentic… All Japanese staff
–affordable (like better than Toshi prices)
–fresh and clean
–tiniest restaurant ever. Like 6 people is too many people. Get takeout instead!

One of the best Sushi place in town– nothing fancy just high quality sushi. Can be slow if you are in a rush, but certainly worth the wait.

Absolutely love this place! Great prices, great food, great service! Wish they had longer hours because I work late but still amazing!

Their sushi rice is really dry, hard and seems old. Just too chewy for me. BC roll tasted a bit too fishy ate a couple and threw it out. Cali roll just ok. Takes awhile to get your food even if you get take out.

They mainly sell rolls, sashimi, and nigiri. If you want fried, robata, ramen, or udon you gotta go elsewhere.
Quality food on everything we’ve tried so far. Run by Japanese — a definite plus. Reasonable pricing with variety of creative rolls. Worth coming over again!

I too have been coming here for a few years. Drawn back time and time again for the freshness of the ingredients, delicious sushi and excellent service. They serve the finest Toro and the Unagi is divine! Yes one of my favourite sushi restaurants in the city! Bravo!

Great small family run sushi spot. The best quality sushi I’ve had and I eat a lot of sushi. The staff are always friendly and appear to always be in a good mood which is especially important because the kitchen is open concept. Prices are very reasonable.

I love this place! Not much of a roll person but I do like the tropical roll. The sashimi is always super fresh and the toro and unagi is mouth watering. Been going back regularity since they opened.

It’s a neighborhood sushi place yet the quality of food and service is very impressive. I work near by and I get food from here at least once a week and been their customer for years and not once am disappointed.
Their creative rolls are amazingly good and they have new special for lunch which I have tried all. They are delicious!!!
Dare I say my absolute favorite sushi place in vancouver.

This place has variations on rolls that you may not find elsewhere. Their menu changes a little from time to time as well.
It is a pretty small place and they’re not open on sundays. The staff are friendly and courteous.
My favorite roll there was the ocean lemon roll. Very clean and fresh tasting. The dynamite roll is a little different as the prawn is not deep fried in tempura. Apparently this place has no fryer…
All in all I find it above average for sushi. It’s a good place if you like very fresh fish and also if you are the type of person who appreciates consistency with your food.

I really like this place, small but nice interior. Lots if different items on menu plus some old favourites. They don’t have a stove top here so nothing cooked.
Great veggie options.

I saw this place as I was driving by one day and looked it up on Unilocal to see if it were any good. All the reviews were great so I decided to try take out last night. I REALLY wanted to like this place and find a new ‘it’ sushi joint but my boyfriend and I were pretty disappointed from what we had. The quality of ingredients was there for sure as they only use wild sockeye salmon, and have organic brown rice if you want, but the taste was missing. We ordered all rolls with brown rice and it was cooked well enough but was very bland, it didn’t have sushi rice flavour to it which may have contributed to the meh tasting sushi. Here’s what we ordered:
— Tuna and salmon sashimi: Very fresh and nice sized slices, this was great. Could have used more shredded daikon though.
— Refresh roll (tuna cilantro w/​lemon mustard sauce): Great presentation with every roll topped with a cilantro leaf on. I couldn’t taste the lemon and could just barely taste the mustard so it was just a plain tuna roll with one cilantro leaf. Maybe it just needed a lot more sauce? My boyfriend only ate one piece of this as he didn’t care for it at all.
— Chopped scallop roll: A solid tasting chopped scallop roll, I’d order this again for sure.
— Sunrise roll (salmon, avocado, cream cheese): I love sushi with cream cheese and this one was just ok; I would have liked a bit more cream cheese.
— Tropical roll (salmon avocado w/​mango sauce): Nice presentation again but the biggest miss on taste. I expected a sweet mango sauce but tasted nothing mango when I ate a piece. I tried the sauce then on its own and it was very bland and had a chalky/​powdery texture so I’m not sure what they actually put in the mango sauce.
— Spicy spinach goma-​ae: This had a good spiciness to it but there wasn’t much other peanut/​sesame flavour at all. This could have been seasoned better.
— Seaweed salad: They don’t serve the ‘typical’ seaweed salad that’s the brighter green and cut in thin strips with sesame seeds/​oil. The seaweed they use is the very dark green type and in small pieces. The salad didn’t have much flavour.
I called my order in a few hours early and it was ready exactly on time. The place is very small and cute. The cashier girl was very nice, and the sushi chefs looked like they knew what they were doing as I was watching them make my order.
If I were walking by this place I’d give it another chance, but I wouldn’t go out of my way (like I did yesterday) to eat here again.

Nice quaint little place on Oak Street! I was recommended to get food from a coworker. «Be careful,» she warned, «It gets really busy for dinner and takeout!»
She was right — I called for takeout at 6:15 leaving work and they apologized profusely many times, making me wonder what could be the problem. Then they said «is 7:05 okay?» Man! Talk about popular, but my coworker wasn’t kidding around at all!
Tokiwa is a friendly little place that doesn’t have a gas burner — which means their menu is very limited. However, that also means that they have very good prices because they don’t have even the extra overhead of a flame. I doubt they have a liquor license either!
So let’s see, what I ordered were 3 rolls and 3 nigiri toro. In review, the packing of the sushi rice was perfect (not too dense or sparse) to enjoy the pure tastes of the fish, and:
— Their tuna with lemon sauce roll hit the spot — the lemon added a great tanginess to the roll which was accented by fresh, raw tuna.
— Their salmon, asparagus and white miso roll was perhaps the biggest miss, because the white miso (which is slightly salty but that’s it) doesn’t add much to either the fish or the vegetable. In a way, it just gave a bit more salt which is what you can control with the soy sauce.
— Their scallop roll is excellent. A beautiful fresh sea breeze imparted with the lightness of baby scallops. Man, I’m in heaven when I get good scallop sushi and this was it.
The toro was also pretty good — it had a definite tuna texture with the slight marbling inherent with toro. However, it was very lean and so trying to get a better taste of that succulent fat which makes tuna belly so attractive was elusive.
All of this came to $ 19.50 after tax. I stuffed myself like a goose (and I’d had all of a carob ball and a small piece of cake through the day otherwise) and this took me a greenie minus two quarters? Sold.
Perfect place to go for not-​so-​inventive sushi and a straightforward experience. People are very friendly, too. What isn’t to like about a hardworking place like this?

Stopped by after a Raz Chan kickboxing class as sushi was on my brain. Even though I have driven up and down Oak dozens of times, this is the first time I spotted this place (maybe because I was looking for sushi). Enjoyed the spinach goma-​ai — next time I’ll try the spicy goma-​ai option; tried the crunchy tuna roll with water chestnuts, teriyaki and alioli sauce — very enjoyable. And totally enjoyed the creation roll which was three different half rolls (or 12 bite size pieces — perfect for me).
Small, cozy with soothing music and dark reddish walls. Did take out (minus the chopsticks and soy sauce as I have at home). Would stop in again as prices are reasonable and I like the sounds of the tuna cilantro with lemon mustard sauce refresh roll or some of the other rolls using ingredients like pumpkin, garlic lime sauce, balsamic sauce, curry mango sauce. Love that they use wild sockeye salmon and organic brown rice. They say they have been operating it for 3 years. The party trays look good.

They have to go orders and they seem now to do a better job balancing the in-​on and to-​go orders. Thank goodness!
It is a very small space and you don’t want to be hungry and see people picking up their to go orders while you wait.

Ugh!!! What to do when the mad sushi fiend shows up at 1:50pm on a Monday when the best sushi joints are either closed Mondays or already on the last call for lunch? Just happened to drive by Tokiwa and they were OPEN! I was there in a second!
Really cute and cozy place. Small interior so it is also good for takeout. Happy to see that these guys offer brown rice, and at very reasonable prices too! The daily maki combo was only $ 7.95 for 3 kinds, and for an extra $ 0.50, that could be upgraded to brown rice. Now that’s a no-​brainer!
Brown rice maki was really well done, given how easily it can turn out much too wet and gummy. The firm, pearly grains of rice gave the rolls the appropriate texture; fish was fresh, and if I remember correctly, they use wild sockeye salmon as the standard. Great value for the quality you get but the the tradeoff is a very limited selection that is pretty much comprised of variations of salmon and tuna.
This would be an excellent place to visit when I need to satisfy an emergency sushi craving or grab takeout while in the vicinity. No doubt am a fan of Tokiwa for what it is but for the full experience, I will always fall back on my favourite spots.

When it’s authentic in this city-​mad over sushi, have to give it the extra star. Easy to miss on Oak St. and parking’s atrocious here.
Small little joint, japanese-​owned, you order first and sit at your table but they do bring the sushi over to you.
Ordered the Ocean roll, which was lemon & salmon, which honestly didn’t do it – a bit too sour, thx goodness for the mayo.
But the spicy crunchy tuna roll is something to go for, that hit the right spot.
served w/​white ginger of course.
Probably won’t rush to go back anytime soon, just too much out there… just not much in this area, so this is it for sushi.

I’m through with this place. Ever since they went under new ownership (hiroshi’s to tokiwa) they have just gotten skimpier on the filings and bulking their rolls up with rice. the rolls aren’t even nice anymore.
Just ordered 2 rolls with brown rice. $ 10.
The energy roll I ordered had NO tuna in it. just a big piece of pumpkin.
the tuna roll was still good. but after time and time again coming in here and seeing them go WAY downhill0 just NOT cool.
very very upsetting– hiroshi ran a caring sushi bar. the new owners are just out for the profit.