Tokyo Tokyo, 990 Ontario Mills Circle, has changed hands and is now ShinBashi, as tipster Bob Terry alerted me. If the faded condition of the sign is any indication, the restaurant was not being kept up.

But 15 years ago, Tokyo Tokyo was a big deal. In the Ontario area, it was a happening spot, especially on a Friday or Saturday night. Newsroom colleagues and I had many lunches and dinners there in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Come to think of it, Tokyo Tokyo may have been the first place I ever had sushi.

The interior seemed glitzy in those days, almost like a nightclub: patio dining, Japanese paper screens, a couple of private rooms with sunken seating. A signature feature was koi swimming under glass tiles in the floor leading from the entryway back to the sushi bar. This must have tripped up hundreds or thousands of others as it did me, the first time or two. You had the sense you were stepping into water.

The food may only have impressed those of us who didn’t know much about Japanese food, which at that point was practically everyone who lived here. But it seemed good.

I don’t know when or how Tokyo Tokyo lost its mojo, or why. In one period, the health department grade was a C, a shocker for a business-lunch spot. Quite likely, tastes for Japanese food became more sophisticated, and Tokyo Tokyo would have gradually been lost in the shuffle as more restaurants opened around Ontario Mills. The increasingly faded sign seemed to show the bloom was off the rose.

“The whole place is worn out,” one Yelp commenter wrote in July, saying the restaurant had never been remodeled.

In August, another wrote: “WTF happened to this place?!?!? So sad! We haven’t been here in years and we were regulars before. On a Friday night back in the days this place was packed and now not one person at the sushi bar. The fish in the glass at the bar was old and we were scared to order anything not cooked, the sushi chefs were helping from another sushi place and didn’t even know the menu, the food was awful, the waitress tried to be friendly but it just wasn’t enough, the lights at the sushi bar were turned off and it was dark and depressing. This place used to be the spot and now it’s a run down has been. It still has potential and a great location they just need the right owner to fix it up again. So disappointed.”

So, inevitably for rundown has-beens, Tokyo Tokyo is gone. Welcome to ShinBashi. “Koi still there, for now,” Terry reports. Good luck to the koi and to the new owners.