Jason W.
Yelp
Context is everything when judging a restaurant.
If Tora-Ya (Tiger Shop?) were located in my previous city (Lille, France) I would be giving it an instant 5 stars because 1) there are zero ramen spots in Lille, and 2) restaurants with this kind of personality and homey charm are rare in that unfortunate part of the world. Now, if Tora-Ya were located in Japan, I could not tell you how it would compare to your standard local ramen establishment there. I'll leave that to the Japanese visitors and immigrants to Quebec City to determine. What I'm most inclined to do then is judge this place against the many fine ramen restaurants I enjoyed as an NYC inhabitant of the mid-2000s. That's why I'm giving Tora-Ya four stars, where in other contexts I very well may be giving it five stars or even three stars.
As others have noted Tora-ya tends to fill up quickly, so the best approach you can take for dinner is to show up at around 5:10 pm after all of the seats have been grabbed up by the first-wave, eager beaver crowd. If you timed it well, you'll find yourself heading up the line of second-wavers. I know, it seems dumb to show up intentionally late, but here me out. If you pout innocently without muttering or giving the stinky eye, one of the servers, struck with pity, will offer you a pint while you wait, to which you will say: "That's a thing? Fuck yes." And now you get to spend the next 30 minutes sipping your lager in the warmth of the entrance, grimacing through the window at all the losers queued up outside. That's right: losers standing in the cold without beer.
Eventually, someone will finish their meal and you'll sit down to order sides of kimchi, kara age, and those warm little octopus balls with brown sauce. You should probably also order a soy sauce-based ramen-with-everything (Ômori Shôyu) since it's not much more expensive than the other ramens-with-not-everything.
I have to be honest, I enjoyed the sides and the beer much more than the main dish. Again, I'm comparing this food experience to all of the giant, delicious ramen bowls I tucked into back in my NYC days. This just wasn't the same standard. Still, some Japanese dude or gal will probably tell me that this is exactly how the ramen is served in Japan and the stuff I was eating in midtown was yuppie overkill. So be it. Context is everything.