You Don Ya is located at 108 Dundas St. W. and Bay St. in downtown Toronto's core. Its specialty is donburi, the Japanese bowl of rice topped with gravy or sauce, and meat and/or vegetables, so that the topping flavours the rice below. It’s $18 for the weekday special, but as expected there’s only a smaller donburi set then with beef and salmon missing. We went for weekend lunch and it varies from $20 to $28. Mishy had yakiniku marinated Angus with onion for $28, I had miso-cured salmon for $24. Pop is $2 canned not AYCD.
The AYCE component is that with any donburi purchase access to the mini-buffet of sides is provided. Mishy loved the pasta salad and said it was amazing, similar to a very good store-bought. She also thought the potato salad was made off-premises. I agree that for both it’s possible; they resemble quality store deli... certainly good regardless of origin. Takoyaki was very good and I’m usually not into it given the ingredients... I added Japanese mayo. (Mishy refuses to eat it because of the octopus: “I won’t eat anything smarter than me” she confessed to me today.) Strangely, even though there is no sushi so I don't know what it would be used for, the wasabi in the buffet condiments seems to be real wasabi; It had a more interesting flavour than the usual horseradish, and is also coarse-ground and grainy like the real thing.
Spring mix salad mislabeled as “lettuce salad” was quite good with the included Caesar dressing. Mishy loved the wakame salad, calling it the perfect blend of sweet and salty. Miso soup was fantastic with the included green onions and wakami (or kombu? It had a thickness.) Potato croquette (aka korokke), which look like small katsu, were very good with the tonkatsu sauce. Fukujin pickle I have never had at an AYCE before and completely loved it... it had a wonderful sweet-and-salty flavour with mild hints of raisin, and an addictive satisfying crunch, so I had seconds.
Kimchi radish and cabbage were as usual excessively pungent, but not horribly so. I miss the days when it was edible everywhere. Kimchi cucumber slices just didn't work for me as they reminded me of my least favourite pickles -- bread and butter -- with an odd flavour, and an aftertaste of soap. Cabbage salad was good with the sesame dressing, one of the few times Mishy was more impressed than I was as she said it tasted just like Gyubee's, but I didn't think it was as good as it lacked some of the tang. There’s “Sweet Tofu Skin” on the signage on the buffet but I didn’t see this anywhere.
The salmon in the donburi was excellent. It's served with wakame salad and slices of a yellowish something... probably takuan aka danmuji which is pickled daikon radish sliced into fruit crescents. My main course may have been healthier, but Mishy definitely got the more enjoyable of the two, as the wonderful warmth and savour of the beef went into the rice all the way down and the flavour was exceptional.
For dessert, there is matcha green tea and vanilla ice cream. Mishy absolutely loved the matcha and so did I... one of the better matcha ice creams I've ever had, just a wonderfully strong green tea flavour with no bitterness or weird overtones. Vanilla was also very good, and neither of them were freezer-burned. I’d like to return on a weekday to You Don Ya sometime even just just to get that ice cream again. It was a very good lunch with some standout items and only one I didn’t like.
Rating: 8.5 / 10 + 0 value adjustment (standard pricing) = 8.5 / 10
