Four family members, nine seats, 20 courses: inside Toronto’s sweetest new omakase restaurant

Name: The Onda Contact: 750 St. Clair Ave. W., theonda.ca, @onda_toronto
Neighbourhood: Wychwood Owners: Yoongil Choi, Yoonmi Choi, Sunil Woo and Jiyoung Kim Chefs: Yoongil Choi (Yasu, Okeya Kyujiro) and Sunil Woo Accessibility: Not accessible (washroom in basement)

Toronto has no shortage of omakase counters, but few feel this personal: one service a night, nine seats, four family members and nearly 50 years of experience behind the knives. Onda isn’t trying to replicate Tokyo or Kyoto—it’s staking a claim for what serious Japanese cooking can look like through a Korean Canadian lens, grounded in rigour but free from the hushed solemnity that can haunt high-end sushi counters.

Brothers-in-law Yoongil Choi and Sunil Woo cook; Yoonmi Choi and Jiyoung Kim, their wives, run the room. That’s the whole operation. There’s one dinner service a night, and lunch is on weekends only. They didn’t have a launch party, and they’re not hustling for virtual likes or followers. There’s just a very full reservation book, courtesy of word of mouth.

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“We want guests to feel like they’re visiting family,” co-owner Yoonmi Choi says. “By the end of the night, everyone should be talking.” And they usually are. Dining here feels less like restaurant service, more like a dinner party—one where the host casually wields a razor-sharp yanagiba and serves very good sake.

The Food

Lunch ($135 for 14 courses) leans classic omakase—sushi-forward and tightly paced. Dinner ($250 for 20) stretches toward kaiseki, moving from cold plates to hot courses to a pristine run of nigiri before returning to the stove for a final trio of composed dishes. Some courses are Edo-coded in their restraint. Others flex with Korean sweetness and spice. “I’m not Japanese,” Yoongil Choi says. “So I cook with respect, but in my own way.”

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Here’s a look at some of the courses you can expect to hit the counter at the Onda—that is, if you can manage to land a dinner reservation.

The Drinks

This is the Marie Kondo of drink lists. The bar skips the clutter of cocktails entirely, opting instead for a short sake list built for pairing. For $150, they’ll pour a structured flight that includes bottles like Keigetsu Cel24 (Junmai Daiginjo), Nanbu Bijin Blue Label (Ginjo), Kid Karakuchi (Junmai) and Tatenokawa (Junmai Daiginjo), moving from aromatic and fruit-forward to clean to crisp and dry as the meal approaches its hearty close. Prefer to stick with one spirit all night? Their selection includes fabulous bottles like the famously smooth Dassai 23, made with rice polished down to 23 per cent of its starting weight. Also on offer: a selection of Japanese beer, sparkling tea, pop and Perrier.

The Space

At just 150 square feet, this jewel box of a restaurant is minimalism distilled. The intention was to make it feel like stepping into a traditional Japanese home: walls framed to mimic shoji and a sleek L-shaped bar wrapped in pale wood anchoring the room. YSP Design Studio handled the interiors, keeping the palette pale (elm and limestone) and the lines clean so nothing distracts from the choreography behind the counter.

The counter acts as the room’s hearth, with everyone gathered around it. “This style of restaurant, omakase, allows us to be with our guests,” says Chef Choi. “I hate being hidden in the kitchen, away from everyone.” Jiyoung Kim, his wife, adds, “We love when our guests relax and start talking more—when dinner feels more like a party.” Meals here often begin in a hush, strangers murmuring politely to their plus-ones. Over three hours, the hosts gently draw the room out—answering questions on fish aging, topping up glasses, explaining the migration of firefly squid. By the final courses, the counter hums with guests chatting across it, no longer reverent but fully engaged.