Oja Noodle House

689 Yonge Street
Toront, Ontario
416.944.8371

I met up with my friend C in Toronto while I was in town for a round of interviews. I was lucky that she lives only a few blocks from the hotel where the interview was taking place. For lunch, we agreed on going to a Korean/Japanese on Yonge Street. (the longest street in the world). We were temporarily swayed by Spring Rolls next door, but decided to stick to Oja.



Oja offered many lunch specials, spanning from Korean fare to sushi to various bento boxes. C & I both decided on a tempura bento box (who can resist deep fried goodness?) for $9.95, hers with bulgogi and mine with spicy chicken. The special came with a hot and sour soup that I thought was quite hot, and I think my heat tolerance is above average. Yowser!


Very spicy hot and sour soup.

Supposedly, C is the perfect person to order tempura with because she does not love seafood. I thus inherited her two shrimp tempura, with my share totalling four! She even joked that I should mention in my post that the bento box does not come with 4 tempura shrimp. We did not want to create false expectations.

My bento box, stacked with four shrimp tempura.

Other than the shrimp tempura, there were also zucchini, acorn squash yam tempura. It was hot and crunchy. I do love tempura. The bento box also included yam rolls that I quite enjoyed and a little salad that was average.

Tempura close-up.

Yam rolls.


Boring salad.

My spicy chicken was sweet rather than spicy. I actually thought the artificial red sauce was overly sweet and I did not finish the chicken. What I did enjoy were the glass noodles, with a soy and sesame oil dressing. I have had this before at Korean/Japanese restaurants and have tried to replicate it with poor results. Does anyone have a good recipe?

Spicy (Sweet) Chicken.

Lovely glass noodles.

As we left the restaurant, we encountered a march to mark the 50th anniversary of Tibet's uprising against China. They must have felt passionate about the cause, having to march in a cold drizzle. According to C, there are protests regularly on Yonge Street.

Protest for 50 year Tibet.

I had a great time seeing C again. I had last seen her over a year ago. Who knew that neither of us would be working at the same company?! Hopefully, we get to enjoy food in Toronto again!