All Entries Tagged With: "Japanese"

Sakura Sushi in Brighouse Square, Richmond

I gotta listen better to chowtimes readers.

Like I said in the earlier post, we get the best recommendations for good food from our readers. This is another one.

You see, we received two strong recommendations on Sakura Sushi and did not take it seriously.

• From Kenrick who commented on 25-Jan-2010: “If you haven’t already, I would also suggest you try out Sakura Sushi across the strip next to Bob’s Submarine shop. It is owned and run by a small Japanese team and the chef there prepares fresh and delicious sushi (I believe his name is Yoshi). I go there for lunch often and they never fail to deliver. They have a crispy panko dynamite roll which I love and is quite unique. I will say their portions are not big, but they are filling, and focus on the simplicity and taste/texture rather than flash.”
• From Vina who sent us an email on 07-Aug-2010 saying: “just wanted to let you know about sakura sushi in the staples strip mall on no.3 road in richmond.  it’s probably my favorite sushi restaurant despite it’s small size and unpretentious interior because of its great service, good pricing and fresh sashimi.  i would personally recommend the seaweed salad and ‘what the hell’ roll that has unagi on top of a salmon and avacado roll.  all the salmon that it serves is only wild alaskan salmon which is great because it is much healthier than the usual farmed pink salmon.  give it a go one day!”

Two weeks ago, I was lazy to go out for dinner. As you probably know, Suanne NEVER cooks on the weekend. I have my day off work and so she said she MUST have her day off too. So we had to eat out. I decided that we should just go to one that is closest to home and have a quick dinner. Moreover, the boys would definitely say yes to sushi.

I had little expectations really. Firstly the name Sakura Sushi sounded so unimaginative. Secondly, for a Japanese restaurant located in Brighouse Square I had my doubts that it is Japanese owned. Thirdly, the store front let me think how small it was. Fourthly, the sign is in bright red and yellow which makes me really think it is Chinese owned.

The place is small and simple. It is so small that counting the number of seats is easy … 1, 2, 3 … 11, 12, 13. That’s it.

Sakura Sushi is most definitely Japanese owned. The waitress is Japanese who was very polite and friendly and spoke English with a very heavy Japanese accent. Even though we were the first one there the waitress informed us that they are very busy and will take some time for our order to come. It seems like its a small operation … there is only the chef and the waitress that we saw the whole time. I think they were busy because of take away orders. We were not in a rush or what, so it was not an issue for us.

Their special is pasted on the wall. I was quite drawn to the Unagi Tamago Roll which has an extra line that say “please try this without soy sauce because it’s tasty!” The words “without soy sauce” was underlined and printed in red — so it must be darn tasty.

Sold! That is what I had.

The Unagi Tamago Roll costs $4 for six pieces. Since we had a coupon printed from their website, it was $1 off. So, it is $3. Not bad.

No wonder it said no soy sauce. It is because they already have sauce (teriyaki?) on it. It was quite good but nothing outstanding if you ask me.

Oh yeah, the tamago in the picture looks like avocado doesn’t it? It is made of eggs. It is just that it is compact and cut so smoothly and the greenish outline seems to make it looks ike avocado. Suanne and I debated about this for a long time and was wondering if we forgot or what.

We love the Deep Fried Soft Shell Crab. Delightfully looking isn’t it? This is $7.75.

The meat is simply fantastic … soft. The shell is so soft too that you just … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Shoryumen and Fumisen and Bakudanyaki Food Trucks in Richmond

Alright.

Some of you might remember that I blogged about Richmond’s answer to Vancouver’s Japadog last summer. That post generated quite an active discussion not only on chowtimes.com but a picture from that post also made it into a discussion thread on chowhound.

The unflattering picture of a half-eaten bakudanyaki became the focus of the Most Frightening Food You Have Seen Lately discussion thread. When I took that picture above, the only thing I was thinking of was how delicious it was. But on hindsight, I guess the Bakudanyaki does look rather frightening.

That one and only street food stall in Richmond has since grown …

It is now THREE food trucks. I had wanted to earlier name this post “Vancouver 1 – Richmond 3″ but decided otherwise because it will inflame the Vancouver area food bloggers.

But seriously, I think Richmond is going to blaze the way in terms of promoting street food. Richmond is going to show Vancouver that it is alright to sell street food other than hotdogs.

In addition to the Tenku Bakudanyaki food truck, they have expanded to selling ramen and sushi cones too. They are still at the same location — at the intersection of Gilbert Road and Elmbridge Way.

The Richmond food trucks are easier to locate now. It is just next to that Inukshuk which is fashioned out of containers. Someone apparently thought it is a great idea to put that up in support of the Olympics. Good thing they did not paint it in the colors of the Vancouver 2010 logo or else VANOC will be going after them.

These food trucks are making news. Even the CBC were there doing an interview with the man behind all these food trucks when we were there.

*gasps* We are getting identified. While waiting for the interview to finish, the assistant of the CBC interviewer turned to me and asked “Are you chowtimes?” LOL!

I was kind of surprised, right? So my first reaction is “Yes, but how did you guess?”. Apparently she recognizes Suanne, Arkensen and Nanzaro. :-)

The man behind the three food trucks is Kan. He came across to me as energetic and brimming with ideas. While he was making the ramen for us, I asked him some question. He was excited  and wanted to tell the world the plans he had in mind and yet he held back being specific about them. He said three times how little time he has to implement his plans.

From my conversation with Kan, I can clearly see that this young man is not going to stop expanding anytime soon.

We decided to try two bowls of Ramen. These are simple ramens.

Ordering is simple. You just choose one of the soup base you want. Kan said that he only have the Kuro, Aka and En ramen for now. The more expensive Ton ramen is not available until February 9th. That Ton is interesting because he said he is limiting that to only 20 bowls a day because of space and time constraints.

Each of the ramen comes with … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Kenzo Japanese Noodle House on Kingsway and Griffiths, Burnaby

It was one of those rare moments that everyone in the family collectively agree on what to eat.

Usually the weekend would start with us asking the boys what they wanted. I don’t know why we always do that because we almost always end up over-ruling them. Arkensen would say anything sushi – he doesn’t care where as long as it is sushi. The problem is mummy does not like raw food. Nanzaro first choice is usually a HK Style Cafe and hates the fact that mum and dad always want to go to somewhere new. As for Suanne, she will just say “anywhere you all want” and then when the suggestions came she will rule them out one by one. Don’t ask her. Me … I am always indecisive. I got such a ridiculously long list of restaurants-to-try that it ceases to be of much use.

This time it was surprisingly unanimous. When I suggested “ramen”, I got an all-round “yeah”. And then when I suggested that I drive all the way to eastern reaches of Burnaby, the boys even said “sure, OK”. Normally they would protest if we ever drive across the bridge out of Richmond. Hmmm … I was wondering if they are hiding bad grades from us, or failed to complete their homework or something. They are not normally that agreeable.

So with the boys’ blessings we drove all the way to Burnaby to Kenzo. It was quite a drive from home. All the way from south Richmond to the far reaches of east Burnaby, that drive must have been 40 minutes.

I had always wanted to try Kenzo but even though it was near my office, I did not. This is because Suanne loves ramen and I wanted to save this place so that she can be there too.

I had always assumed Kenzo is a Japanese restaurant. It was only before we walked in that we realize that there are Korean scripts on the signboard too.

The place is clean but is cluttered in some corners. You know little things like newspapers lying at a corner and such. Nothing big. We like the heavy wooden furniture. We gave it a shake — it was really sturdy ones.

Kenzo is more Korean than it is Japanese. I overheard the waitress speaking to a customer in Korean. Other tell tale signs are the presence of a Korean service bell on the table and the stack of Korean newspapers by the door.

One other thing which I felt is also a characteristic of a Korean restaurant. You tell me if you agree. It is the presence of wooden partitions between tables. I see this in many Korean restaurants which provides a little privacy and at the same time allow them to put tables together.

Service was OK. There is one waitress overseeing the entire restaurant. So she does appear harried. She served tea which was a bit different from other places. It was nothing new but it is one of those rice-tea. Not sure what it is called though.

Nanzaro was quick with his order. Being the youngest in the family, he had always been the lowest in the pecking order of things. Of late he is being a lot more aggressive in asserting himself. When he saw that item on the menu right up on the top called “King of Kings”, he immediately said he is ordering that.

The King of Kings is $10 and is described as Hot Netsu Ramen with 5 toppings. I had not heard of Netsu ramen before but anyway the broth is the lighter one and spicy. The toppings includes hard boiled egg, seaweed, vegetables and pork.

The bowls are really large. Ramen had to be large to be … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Swish Swish on Kingsway and Nelson, Burnaby

I had been getting a steady stream of visitors these days at work. This time it was Lauren who flew in from Atlanta for a few days for discussions and planning. These sort of planning sessions are usually grueling as we try to get as much plans agreed within the few available days. So we normally work through lunch most of the time. We would get someone to order in quick lunches like pizza, subs and Chinese take outs.

Since we were ahead on the agenda, I suggested that we take some time and for once go out for a proper lunch on the last day.

I suggested that we go to this new Japanese Hot Pot restaurant at the corner of Kingsway and Nelson — a place I had always wanted to go try. That restaurant is called Swish Swish. Most people driving past this busy intersection may not even notice Swish Swish. This is because it is unnecessarily obscured by pillars which serves no function and does nothing aesthetically to the building. I think it would do the building a world of good if they remove those ugly pillars.

Some of my team members were hesitant about going to this untested restaurant. Firstly this restaurant had been opened only for two months and none of us had ever been there before. Secondly, some of them were unsure if Lauren would be partial to having Asian hot pot knowing that most of our colleagues from the US are cautious about the type of Asian food we have here in Vancouver.

But Lauren insisted that she is excited to try it. So we went.

The interior layout is odd and in a semi-secular arrangement. It does look compact because you could not see to the end of the restaurant from one end. Actually, it does hold quite a number of tables.

The name Swish Swish is the literal translation from the word Shabu-shabu.

Here they serve two types of Japanese hot pots — shabu shabu or Sukiyaki. They are both hot pots … the main difference is in the type of broth served.

Sukiyaki’s soup base has more flavour because it is made with soya sauce and mirin while shabu-shabu’s broth is primarily water.

Click to display larger image.

Swish Swish is actually an All You Can Eat Hot Pot place — or at least that is what they started off as.

Their AYCE is $12 for lunch while dinner is $16. The lunch and dinner AYCE is basically the same except that they have lamb available only for dinner. In the mid-afternoon, they give a $2 discount off the lunch menu price. I think that should qualify it as one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, AYCE hot pot in Vancouver.

However, we did not get the AYCE.

Click to display larger image.

The AYCE would be too much food and will take too long to eat. Instead we had the Lunch Express which they had recently introduced to their menu.

I think it makes sense that they introduce this lighter version of the Japanese hot pot. Most of the lunch’ers around this area are office workers who have time only for quick lunches.

Besides the Sukiyaki hotpot, they provide rice and appetizers. You can opt for udon instead of rice if you want.

I suggest that you ask for rice. If you opt for rice on the side, they also have vermicelli in the hot pot. However, if you ask for Udon, the Udon is served in the hot pot (without vermicelli).

This is what I got … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Menya Japanese Noodle on West Broadway and Yukon

When we had to deal with -7 °C temperatures last week, the rest of Canada was laughing at us whiners in Vancouver. Much of Canada was way colder with some cities at -30 °C. Whether it is -30 °C or -7 °C, it is freezing. To think of it, it is still not winter yet.

It was supposed to have some flurries last night — it didn’t. We have everything primed for snowfall except for one small detail, moisture.

One thing came to our mind each time we encounter freezing weather. At this time of the year, Suanne will agree to anything that has hot soup. I have a feeling that for the next few months, we are going to have blog posts of Pho, Ramen, Hot Pots and such.

It was Suanne’s choice to have Ramen. She likes Ramen a lot. We had been to Kintaro which claimed to have the best ramen in North America. It was good but Suanne does not like the lines, the small outlet and the rush you feel eating there. I understand. You can’t really slurp each bite of the ramen at your leisure there when there are people milling around waiting for a table.

Ramen purists will be disappointed with this. The favourite Ramen place that our family like the best is Ajisen Ramen. LOL! We really do. They have a nice variety of ramen. OK, let me put it this way to placate the Ramen purists … they have a nice variety of “ramen”.

This time we went to Menya which is located at the corner of Broadway and Yukon.

Menya is very Japanese. The moment we walked in, we were greeted enthusiastically in Japanese. That is one of many aspects of the Japanese culture we admire so much. Despite so much similarity to the Chinese culture, sometimes I wonder why in the area of restaurant service it is like night and day. The difference is so stark that I think I would be stunned if I get that kind of greeting and service in a Chinese restaurant of this size.

Menya has that rustic feel to it. The chairs are made of tree stumps. I am beginning to notice that tables too. I think I see this in several Japanese restaurants before. They have a little drawer underneath it and a hook by the side. Suanne and I figured that this is a common feature in Japanese restaurant tables where space is a premium and as such the drawer is a practical way save real estate on the table top. As for hooks, it is too low for jackets for sure. We think it is to hang ladies handbags. Are we right?

The menu is small and simple. It is just a 1 pager with seven choices of ramen. On tip though, pay attention to the Specials written on chalk board. Every now and then they have something new not on the menu.

That’s what I did. I ordered the Tan-Tan Men off the chalk board. This is $8.50. It is cooked in pork broth with spicy red chili oil. It is more spicy than it looks. One would normally associate spiciness with red. It is topped with ground pork and vegetables.

Taste-wise, it is dominated by the sesame paste. The soup is rich which is alright but we both did not think it is something we would order next time round. It is just too rich and too much sesame paste that we personally do not quite like.

I should have gone with my initial choice of Menya Shoyu Ramen.

Suanne went with the safer choice. She had … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Sushi Garden on Kingsway, Metrotown.

There are quite a number of sushi houses lining Kingsway near the Metrotown area like you won’t believe. Let me see those I can recall some of the popular ones at the top of my head … Oyama, Tomoya, Kura, Isami, Yako, Asakusa and of course …

… Sushi Garden. Among all the Sushi houses here, it appears that Sushi Garden is the most popular.

As popular as it is, I don’t normally go to Sushi even though it is a short walk from my office. The reason is the crowd. It is very busy during lunchtime. To get a table you are advised to get there at least 15 minutes before noon.

That was what I did. By noon, all the tables will have been taken. On the day I went to Sushi Garden it was also raining quite heavily and yet it was full at noon.

They are popular because of the value and their sushis are quite decent too. What sucks about Sushi Garden to me is their service. I understand that they are busy and the waitresses have their hands full keeping things together but they do have an aloof mannerism that it is bordering on rudeness … at least that is how I felt when I was there. Mind you, I was there so early and they had the time to properly serve me. Instead, they were standing by the bar chatting with the chefs. I had to signal them that I am ready to order (I had put my menu down for minutes already). It seems like my waitress was unhappy that I interrupted her chat!

I decided on the item that has the most variety of sushis (and also the most expensive). The Deluxe Assorted Sushi is $16 and consists of 10 different type of sushis. It also has a couple of small tuna and salmon rolls “on the side” so to speak.

One thing I noticed all the time is that they serves their sushis on wooden platforms. Never been to Japan before myself, I assume that it is … More on following page. Click here to continue reading

Koi Sushi on Westminster Hwy, Richmond

There is one thing we know that our boys would always like — sushi. They don’t really care about the quality at all. All they want is quantity. The more the better.

When I suggested that we check out the new All You Can Eat sushi restaurant, they were delighted. But there is a problem … Suanne just don’t like Sushi and raw fish. She will go along as long as his boys enjoys their food.

We went to Koi Sushi which is just next door to the ever popular Shanghai River. Specifically, it is on Westminster Highway just west of No 3 Road. We recently knew of this place because they had ads on the local city papers announcing their grand opening.

We remembered that this place used to be called the Shota Japanese Cuisine.

The interior was clean and decor was well coordinated. The chairs was comfortable and it was certainly spacious. Not many AYCE sushi places are like this. We were quite impressed.

Service wise, it was slow. It took a while for our hot tea and menu to come … and even that we had to flag the waitress down.

Koi Sushi’s AYCE Lunch is $11. It is $1 extra for Friday through Sunday.

Koi’s AYCE menu selection is large and spread over two pages. Unlike a lot of other Sushi AYCE, Koi has Robata too. Needless to say, Suanne was really happy to see that.

The above was what we ordered … lots of sushis for the boys and lots of Robatas for Suanne. We thought we would order this as our first order and then order some more afterwards. Nope … it turned out that is too much food.

Their sashimi is $2 extra. I really don’t know how this all works out but regardless, the sashimi is small. I don’t think we had seen sashimis cut this small before.

It is kind of hard to judge their servings. For instance, we had no idea that this one order of the Teriyaki Chicken came with … More on following page. Click here to continue reading