All Entries in the "Japanese" Category
Guu in Aberdeen, Richmond
It’s getting tougher to look for a new cake place for cake meet with Polly. I got a couple of places to check out but only found out that they are open late in the afternoon which does not suit our timing. It was also a rainy day and we ended up in Aberdeen Center in Richmond. At least the car park is covered and there is plenty of parking spaces. That’s why we ended up our cake meet at Guu in Aberdeen.
Guu in Aberdeen opens for lunch at 11:30am. That is still ok with us. Since we were there at about 11:00 am, we had some time to do some groceries shopping before our lunch. Polly likes to do her groceries shopping on Friday as most groceries places are packed with people in the weekends. As for me, I like to do my groceries shopping at the beginning of the week as I seldom cook during weekends.
Guu is a Izakaya type of Japanese restaurant. All the servers will greet you the moment you enter and leave the restaurant. They are full of enthusiasm. I like their high spirit. The only other Asian restaurant that practice such greetings are Taiwanese restaurant. However, they are more subtle.
Polly likes Guu’s cup and condiment holders, especially the cup with the fish imprints. Chinese restaurants usually have toothpicks at the counter but in Guu, they actually have them on the table. What a nice touch.
We ordered two items to share. The first item was called the Guuu’d Box. It’s on the lunch special menu. This bento box costs More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Shabusen Yakiniku House on Granville and West 14th, Vancouver
The last time we had Japanese AYCE (all-you-can-eat) was 7 months ago. That was when we went to E-Bei.
As much as Nanzaro and Arkensen love Japanese sushi, the reason why we had not gone to one more often is because Suanne just doesn’t like raw fish, period.
But Shabusen Yakiniku House is different. It is both a Japanese AYCE and a Korean BBQ AYCE.
There are two Shabusens in Vancouver. There is one in downtown Vancouver. We went to the other one on Granville.
In case you don’t know, the word Yakiniku means grilled meat in Japanese.
For an AYCE, Shabusen looks a lot posh and better than all the other AYCEs we had been to. The whole place is bright with lots of ceiling high windows and skylights. It was actually a beautiful day eating here despite the it being rainy the whole morning. The Fall colors looked so good at this time of the year.
Every table had a gas grill in the center. That is for the Korean BBQ. See the bottle above? That is the BBQ sauce but really, we hardly need to use that because the meat were already very well marinated.
Service was kind of slow here. The waiters and waitresses seems to walk around with their eyes peeled to the ground all the time. It is as if they are afraid that if they get eye contact with the customer, they will have to do more work or something. It was so hard to get their attention when we wanted something from them.
The AYCE is $13 for weekdays and $13.50 for weekends. Dinner is is $22.
The selection at a glance looks a lot smaller than places like Kingsway Sushi and E-Bei. The above was our first round order where we max out our order of Sashimis.
We left these 32 pieces to the boys. These alone kept them very happy.
For Suanne and I, we were quite contended with the Korean BBQ. There are three choices … chicken, beef and pork.
In our greed, we ordered a total of EIGHT plates of BBQ meat. That was way too much and we had a difficult time finishing all of them. We did not feel good about wasting food.
For once, I was the one who did all the cooking. Oh yeah, believe it or not [giving myself a pat on the back].
BBQ is a guy thing for some reason. Suanne was happy to let me do all the work while she enjoys my cooking.
Well, I must say that I did quite well. The meat was super … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Samurai Sushi House on Cambie Near 41st, Vancouver
This is one place we expect our boys would love. They like sushi — the more the better.
When I suggested we go to Samurai Sushi for lunch, they were happy. They knew that Samurai is the sister restaurant to the Banzai Sushi House in Richmond. Their claim to notoriety is their ridiculously large rolls.
No serious.
If you have never seen their rolls, I am sure you will laugh when you see it for the first time. Their biggest is what they call the House Roll. It is so big that you can’t even pick it up with your hands without it breaking apart.
We did not expect the place to be so small. There is some seats along the bar and about 2-3 tables. That’s all. Banzai in Richmond is a lot bigger. Here, they have a lot of take out business.
Their picture menu is pasted along the wall.
We got seated on the sushi bar and get to see three chefs at working making the sushi … and the ridiculously large House Roll (click here and here to see how massive they are).
I so wanted to take a picture of the chefs at work but they have such a serious look on their face their I thought I better not. I wanted to show you the rolls that they had already made. You will be surprised how many they already made ready to go. There must be over a hundred rolls neatly stacked all over the place.
My choice was the $9.75 Mixed Combo. It consists of 2 tuna, 2 salmon and 2 ebi sushi.
The salmon … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Cafe de Waraku in Richmond
It was one of the nights that Ben was craving for dessert and there being not many choices, we went to Excellence Tofu and Snacks at Hazelbridge. I wish there are more dessert places in Richmond which serves hot dessert soups. After dessert, we peeped into this new cafe beside the Excellence Tofu to look at the menu displayed outside the glass panels. I did not pay much attention as my first glance is that this place serves Japanese style pasta. But it was Nanzaro who pointed out to me that Cafe de Waraku also serves cheesecakes.
So, I brought Polly to Cafe de Waraku for our cake meet. We were there just past 12:00 noon and the place is still pretty quiet.
We were told that the cafe has opened for about 5 months only. It has simple decorations with a few colourful art pieces on the wall. It is clean and neat.
We like their menu which has colourful pictures. It makes selection much easier. The menu highlights that their items has no msg added and low in sodium. Good for those health conscious people.
Since it’s already noon, we ordered one of their lunch special pasta to try. The pasta comes in three type of flavorings, i.e. Japanese stir fried in original flavour, in cream sauce and in tomato sauce. We picked one in original flavour with eel and egg. This costs $7.99. The noodle is simple and tasty. We totally enjoyed this pasta.
The lunch special comes with a free drink. So, I opted for a coffee, thinking that it will be just dripped coffee. To my surprise, the coffee is pretty good and it even has some crema on it. More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Kintaro Tonkotsu Ramen on Denman, Vancouver
Suanne and I went downtown to cover an event a couple of weeks ago. Since the event was late beyond our normal dinner time and does not really serve food, we decided to just go check out the place which Rey was raving about.
Many would claim that Kintaro’s Ramen is the best in Vancouver. If I recall correctly, Rey even said that Kintaro has the best Ramen outside of Japan … something like that … something like wow, you just gotta try it!
We had seen lines outside the small restaurant before and it was something that put us off trying Kintaro. This time we were there at 5:30PM, just before dinner rush hour. There were tables available at that time. However, by 6PM there were already people patiently waiting outside the restaurant for a table.
Despite its popularity, the restaurant is unbelievably small and if I could add, spartan. I guess it is the charm of a place like this. It is its simplicity that adds to the charm. In Kintaro, it is all about Ramen, and about Ramen. I always believe that a setup like Kintaro is best left as it is … i.e. they should not change a proven formula by expanding this place or remove the long lines! LOL!
I absolutely had no idea what they were all shouting about throughout the time we were there. They shouted the moment we walked in … each time a customer walks out or make an order.
Service was polite. They were polite and patient when they took our orders even though we had so many questions on their menu. I guess it was OK then because there were not so many customers. When the lines starts to form, they were politely coming around very fast the moment we put down a chopstick asking if we are done. I understand that they wanted to turn the tables as fast as they can. They did it politely and we understand. Kintaro is not a place where you would dine … I say spending 45 minutes here is stretching it a bit too long during peak hours. It’s order-eat-pay-go here.
The Red Pepper Mix above (called Shichimi Togarashi) is a common Japanese spice mix used for soups and noodles. It’s a mix of 7 kinds of ingredients.
Kintaro’s menu is a simple 1-pager. We opted for the one that stated “Kintaro’s BEST!”. It is the Miso Ramen ($8).
At the time of ordering here, you need to decide on the richness of the broth (rich, medium or light) and either you wanted fat or lean pork. We asked for RICH broth and FAT pork.
Kintaro’s menu says that their soup is flavored with a blend of soy bean pastes from 4 different Japanese regions and twelve spices. Whatever it is, the soup was very flavorful. The broth was way too rich which somehow made us feel full. We should have asked for medium instead. You could ask for additional toppings ranging from $1-$2 but we did not bother with that.
There were 2 big slices of rather thick pork with mouth-watering marblings. This was like the ultimate in pork … goodness-delicious melt-in-your-mouth type. It was way better than the rather comparatively pitiful ones we had at G-Men — no comparison really. More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Free Dessert from Ebisu Robson and Broadway!
Hello Vancouver.
Update 31-Aug-2009: Please note that this offer has lapsed and no longer available at Ebisu.
Read on because there is a summer treat for you … courtesy of Ebisu on Robson and Chowtimes.com. It is going to be quite a treat, so you may want to pay a little bit more attention to this post! :-)
Suanne and I dined at Ebisu about a month ago. We had a great time and we blogged about it here.
A couple of Thursdays ago, Ebisu on Robson launched their new menu with the introduction of a few pretty interesting and new dishes. At the same time, they had also prepared the Spring/Summer specials.
Suanne and I were back at Ebisu to sample the new items on the day of the launch. More importantly, we were there to work on a three-way-win plan. Ebisu gets to introduce their new menu on chowtimes … and at the same time Chowtimes gets to inject some fun (and value) to our readers. Most important of all, chowtimes readers gets a free dessert.
Like these …
You may get any of these items above as a treat from Ebisu and Chowtimes. Oh, wanted to be clear that this is available only in Ebisu on Robson and Ebisu on Broadway. I’ll share with you the details further down this post because I wanted to show you what Suanne and I became a “guinea pig” for you Vancouverites. He he he ….
Deon, Ebisu on Robsons General Manager, hosted us. We started off one of their new sushi rolls. The one we tried was the Ninja Kicker (above). This roll is targeted for those sushi lovers who craves for a little bit more spiciness in their roll (hence the name).
Suanne and I loves this roll a lot. It is certainly a departure from the normal sushi rolls and is perfect in many ways. If you like a kick to your rolls, I am quite certain you will love this.
Suanne and I learned a lot from Deon. It was interesting how they developed their new menu. The Ninja Kicker has all the elements of a good creation. It is pleasing to the eye with a good balance of colors. It has a combination of contrasting texture. The prawn tempura adds crunch to the texture.
This one has an element of surprise in the taste department.
The secret to the Ninja Kicker is the sauce. All Deon would say is that they started this from a base … the humble Thai-style Sriricha hot sauce. The sauce is darker than Sriricha sauce, that much I know. It has a level of sweetness and with a strong flavour. The spiciness leaves a lingering heat in the mouth.
Tuna Tataki is one of the more popular Japanese dishes. On the surface this looks kind of normal … More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Irashai Grill on West Pender, Vancouver
Here are the better pictures that we had taken at Irashai during our first LIVE blog event. You read the recording of the live blog on the Where Will Suanne and Ben Dine at 5:45PM blog entry. It was truly an experience for us and was thankful to Irashai to have so gracefully invited us to do this and supported us so well in delivering it. Wanted to say thanks to Danielle who helped put this together, Christing who were so patient waiting on us and also Ikoma the chef who gave us a glimpse of the artist at work.
We tried a lot of dishes. If you were to ask us what is the one dish we like a lot, it is the one above … the Summer Roll. This is created by Ikoma. I was telling him that this beats Tojo’s BC Roll and California Roll by miles. You should try it but do read about it on the live blog entry.
Here are some (boring) stats of the live event:
- Total logged on to the event: 92
- Total watched the event for more than 1 minute: 61
- Total comments by readers: 89
- Total comments by chowtimes: 169
- Total images shown: 27
- Total replays viewed as of 04Jun 8PM: 476
For those who logged on to the event, thanks … especially to those who help kept us entertained in between dishes. There were a lot of new things we learned from the commenters.
Here are the rest of the pictures … enjoy.
