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Manpuku Modern Japanese Eatery

105 McCaul St., Toronto. 416-979-6763. Lunch for two with beer, tax and tip, $35.

Kenzo Ra-Men

6180 Yonge St. (south of Steeles), Toronto. 416-229-4526. Dinner for two with beer, tax and tip, $55.

Dining around Toronto, you would think that the Japanese subsist on sushi and teriyaki alone.

Izakayas, the unpretentious Japanese gastropubs that are now all the rage on the West Coast, have all but passed the city by so far.

And Toronto's few excellent kaiseki places, with their elaborate, seasonal dishes and correspondingly hefty price tags - Mississauga's otherworldly Kaiseki Yu-Zen Hashimoto is easily one of the best restaurants in the city - aren't exactly designed to compete with the appeal of the all-you-can-eat sushi bar.

But a handful of casual new places promises to introduce the city to more common if somewhat less celebrated fare, dishing up the cheap, innovative and often sloppy (but delicious) dishes that ordinary Japanese people usually eat.

Manpuku, a humble new "modern Japanese eatery" tucked next to the food court across from the Ontario College of Art & Design, is the most authentic of the bunch, with a noodle counter up front and a selection of well-made comfort dishes - including some that are otherwise all but impossible to find in town.

One of the best signs as you walk in is that there's nobody behind the counter who looks like a sushi master or a kaiseki master or a master of anything, in fact.

Nobody here studied for 14 years before they were allowed to cut a piece of meat or prepare a slice of fish.

How can you tell? Because nobody behind the counter looks older than about 26. Modern indeed.

If you like pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup, you'll love Manpuku's curry udon. It's a giant bowl of thick, tender-chewy noodles in a rich, beefy, deeply aromatic broth.

The curry is only a top note, though. The broth also contains potato chunks and carrots as well as sliced beef and onion.

The same noodles star in kitsune udon, except that they're chilled and sublimely refreshing and topped with sliced age (pronounced ag-eh), the sweet, custardy skin of fried tofu, as well as scallions and crispy tempura scraps.

Manpuku also serves takoyaki, a relatively uncommon street food from Osaka: balls of octopus cooked with pickled ginger, dried shrimp, shaved dried bonito and batter. Hot, tender and layered with flavour, this is some of the finest junk food on Earth. Manpuku's takoyaki, slightly crunchy outside and creamy inside, with decent sized octopus chunks, are among the best in the city.

But the most unusual item on the menu is called natto gohan. I've never seen it in a restaurant in Toronto. It's a sticky, gluey, stinky concoction of fermented soybeans mixed with scallions and Japanese mountain potato and served on rice. It's a popular breakfast food in Japan, but it's also a cultural litmus test of sorts.

At Manpuku, our server, a friendly and extremely helpful young woman, seems excited if somewhat alarmed that we want to try it.

"You know what natto is, right?" she asks us.

When we say that yes, we do, she tells us, "it's a black and white food. You either hate it or you love it."

And then she adds: "I hope you like it." And she actually sounds like she means it.

I don't hate it, exactly. It's sour, as you'd expect fermented beans to be, but it's also a bit dark-tasting, like roasted nuts mixed with yogurt that has gone a little bit past due. Weird, yes, but also strangely appealing. Sushi also was weird until not so long ago.

Ramen, the Japanese fast-food staple of wheat noodles in broth, is having its 15 minutes of fame lately, thanks in large part to David Chang, a young, noodle-obsessed Manhattan chef.

Chang's excellent Momofuku Noodle Bar (named after the inventor of instant ramen) hasn't yet found its equal in Toronto.

Although you can find comparable soup here, the exquisite, resolutely original non-ramen stuff on Chang's menu - cured Arctic char with dill-scented tofu, say, or fried sweetbreads with salted cucumbers and sweet chili sauce - is somewhat harder to come by.

The city nonetheless boasts several new ramen shops, including the very good iNoodle Ramen on Bloor Street in Koreatown.

But Kenzo Ra-Men, in a strip mall in North York, is the city's best. Kenzo's ji su men is hand-pulled noodles topped with beaten egg, scallions, shiitake mushrooms and sliced chicken; the soup is a super-thick pork stock made by boiling bones and collagen.

And Kenzo's King of the Kings Ramen is the standout. The King of the Kings is served in a spicy shrimp and chili-kissed broth that is topped with scallion shavings, thin, fatty slices of honey-roasted pork, half a soft-cooked egg (the golden yolk is umami heaven), three crisp sheets of nori, a slice of fish loaf and a passel of gently marine-tasting seaweed.

Soup doesn't get much better than this.