Taku Sushi & Ramen

A table at Taku rarely orders one cuisine. One person wants a bowl of pork-rich ramen, someone across the table wants salmon sashimi and a torched roll, and the menu is built so that neither has to give way. A full ramen list and a full sushi list run side by side, with teriyaki plates, dumplings, sashimi combos, and party trays filling the gaps between them. The Victoria Avenue kitchen sits a short walk from Clifton Hill and the Falls Avenue crowds, and it has staked itself on breadth: a single Japanese menu wide enough that a group can sit down without first negotiating where to eat. That is the practical promise of the place, and most of what the kitchen does flows from it.

The ramen runs deeper than the genre's usual one or two bowls. Tonkotsu arrives creamy and pork-forward, layered with cha-shu, naruto, menma, a soft egg, wood ear mushroom, green onion, and sesame. The Red Lobster Ramen loads a bowl with lobster tail, mussel, and fish ball. Beef Miso comes built on sliced beef and sprouts, Dan Dan Men leans into sesame and miso with a low hum of heat, and a vegetarian bowl carries vegetable gyoza, corn, and menma for the diner who needs one. This is a section with genuine range rather than a single hero bowl, and that breadth is the tell of a kitchen that expects ramen to be half the reason people walk in, not a courtesy listing beside the sushi.

The sushi side answers in equal depth, and the signature rolls are where it shows off. Rock n' Roll stacks spicy salmon, cream cheese, avocado, and tempura flakes under flame-torched salmon and a sweet, spicy finish. The Green, Black, and Red Dragon rolls each crown shrimp tempura with avocado, barbecue eel, or fresh red tuna, depending on which one a table reaches for. The Volcano Roll buries scallop and tobiko in a creamy hot sauce and flames it to close. Around those sit the workhorses a regular orders without thinking: California and spicy crispy salmon rolls, salmon and tuna sashimi, chirashi, and the crisp-rice salmon sushi pizza. Combos and a seventy-two-piece party tray handle the orders that have to feed a crowd, while gyoza, takoyaki, beef tataki, and ginger-soy chicken karaage open the table before any of the larger plates land.

Read together, the menu describes a kitchen that wants to be useful more than it wants to be narrow. A specialist sushi counter would not also run a six-bowl ramen section, and a dedicated ramen shop would not carry party trays, sushi-and-sashimi combos, bubble tea, beer, and sake. Taku carries all of it, and the range is the entire point. The format is a casual Japanese all-rounder built for the way people actually eat near a tourist corridor, where a table might be locals on a weeknight or visitors stepping off the Hill in search of something more settled than the strip. On this menu the answer to almost any craving is somewhere on the same page. Even the drink list stays in-house, running from matcha and mango-coconut bubble tea to Sapporo and a sweet, creamy Sayuri sake, with tempura ice cream and green-tea cheesecake waiting to close the meal out.

That usefulness extends well past the dining room. The same menu travels for takeout, and the party trays, combos, and shareable appetizers make Taku an easy default when an order has to feed a group rather than a couple. Opened in 2021, it has settled into the Falls Avenue district as the kind of Japanese option a neighbourhood quietly keeps on its short list. The reason is not that it does any one thing better than every other kitchen nearby. It is that the current menu, which the restaurant treats as its live source of truth, gives almost everyone at the table a reason to stay on it.