Two Vancouver ramen shops coming to Toronto this spring

A couple weeks back, we told you about Kingyo Izakaya, a Vancouver cult favourite that had plans to expand to Toronto later this year. Now we bring news of two more Japanese restaurants making the trip east. First, there’s Raijin, a new ramen shop from Daiji Matsubara, the owner of Kintaro and Motomachi Shokudo in Vancouver. Raijin, currently in construction in the former Cr3asians space on Gerrard just east of Yonge, should be open in just a few weeks, permits willing (in other words: it could be a little longer). The other new ramen shop is Kinton, which owner Nobuaki Urata (who was the manager at Kintaro for seven years) tells us should be open on Baldwin sometime in May. Many devoted ramen heads have been singularly unimpressed with Toronto’s current offerings (although the new offerings at Guu have attracted early fans), but with the arrival of these two new shops, along with Japanese chain Santouka, things are about to get interesting.