All Entries Tagged With: "Sushi"
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.
The above are pages from Samurai Sushi’s take out menu.
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
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
Party Tray from Jumbo Sushi
Alright, this will come across to you like a test post. It is. There are a few things I wanted to test out and wanted to see how it goes.
For some reason, I felt that the past winter had been particular long and drabby and cold. Nothing exciting happened during the past few months. But the winter is finally over … yah!
Actually it was still cold but at least the sun is out with a vengeance. So, I dragged a very reluctant Suanne out (the boys were OK) to have sushi takeout lunch at the park. I am wicked, I know.
Banzai Sushi House on Westminster Highway, Richmond
We raved about our find at Jumbo Sushi just a couple of weeks ago. It was not because Jumbo Sushi is good or anything like that. It was because they serve HUGE JUMBO sized sushi for cheap. It was just perfect for my boys who can devour sushis like there is no tomorrow.
It WAS.
Jumbo Sushi WAS the boys favourite for just two weeks. The family favourite is now the Banzai Sushi House (thanks to the recommendation of Vanessa, again).
Banzai Sushi is located on Westminster Highway in the strip mall across from the Richmond Public Market. It is actually just next door to Tsim Chai Noodles. For some reason, I had never taken notice of Banzai Sushi before … strange.
The picture above is somewhat misleading. We were the first customer as soon as they open at 11AM. Shortly after, it was all packed — certainly a very popular place and to think that I thought there were no sushi places of note in Richmond.
Nanzaro ordered the Tuna and Salmon Sashimi. This is just over $9.25.
But they are HUGE … everyone of them. It was mind boggling seeing sashimi pieces these big. Nanzaro was absolutely delighted with his bowl and tried his best not to smirk at his older brother’s selection. It was not often that Nanzaro beats Arkensen in anything.
Just look at the size of it one more time. It is just this thing alone that I am sure we will be making repeat trips to Banzai Sushi. Size DOES matter.
Arkensen selected from the Maki Combo B. This is $9 and consists of five types of half rolls.
Jumbo Sushi on No 3 Road, Richmond
We just stumble onto a sushi place which will be a family favourite for sometime to come. We had been to Jumbo Sushi twice already. The first time, we did not even bother to bring along the camera as we did not think much about this place. The following week we re-visited Jumbo Sushi armed with the camera because we felt this will be worth writing about.
Jumbo Sushi is located on No 3 Road across the road from Richmond Center. It is at the small strip mall between Cook Road and Park Road.
Jumbo Sushi is pretty much a hole-in-the-wall. There is nothing to talk about in terms of decor. The furniture are IKEA — even the plastic cups are from IKEA. The only thing other than the word sushi here that attempts to make this like a sushi restaurant is limited to the small banner with Japanese words and a couple of lanterns. The people are Chinese for sure as they speaks perfect Cantonese.
Deciding what each of us wanted was not easy because there were so many choices and options with specials. They have pictures of their offerings pasted all over the wall.
To the purists, Jumbo Sushi will be the kind shunned as a wannabe Japanese restaurant.
But … it is the kind of place our boys love. Suanne and I like it too.
Jumbo Sushi is named that way because they make JUMBO sushis. We love this place because it is value for money. Our growing boys do not care for top grade salmon sashimi for their sushi. They just want LOTs of sushi … and bigger is better.
In short, Jumbo Sushi is value for money for reasonable quality. They also have quite a number of unique sushi creations worth discovering.
We had a few specialty sushi to share. The one above is called the Supreme Mango Roll which costs $4.75. In it, they have avocado, crab meat, mango and then topped off with more mango and roe. The roll, like all their other rolls are very big. It is so big that you could not eat this with just one bite.
Does any of you knowledgeable about roes? Are these salmon roe? Tell me more about this because I know so little of them.
Anyway, although the roe are big, they tasted kind of fishy. Is it because it is not fresh or does roe supposed to taste like that?
The Hawaiian Beef Roll is one that Suanne will eat because it is cooked. Suanne has still not come to grip with eating uncooked food.
The Hawaiian Beef Roll had beef and pineapple with teriyaki sauce. This is good … and only $3.50.
E-Bei Japanese Restaurant at Granville and 41st, Vancouver
Each time we go for AYCE (all-you-can-eat) we end up regretting over eating. However, this time we cannot say no because the birthday boy (Arkensen) gets the choice. Nanzaro was, without doubt, very happy with the choice.
We decided to go to E-Bei for the AYCE. We had heard of some bad reviews of E-Bei on many sites before but decided to go nevertheless. It is because I know our boys are not food snobs and will definitely enjoy E-Bei — and they did.
E-Bei is located at the intersection of 41st and Granville in Vancouver. One thing we did not like about dining here is that we had to pay for parking … $4 for two hours.
E-Bei is not very big as far as AYCE Sushi places are concern. I am comparing the size of this place with places we had been to before like Fish On Rice and Kingsway Sushi. E-Bei was packed when we were there and there was quite a bit of a wait line too.
So, there you go … sometimes one cannot just rely solely on anonymous reviews. People does obviously enjoy E-Bei and find this place of good value here. However, seating is tight … so tight that we could see and smell the food of our neighbor.
To us, this place is more Chinese than Japanese. From the looks of the customers and workers, I can see Chinese faces. Can you tell facial features of Chinese from Japanese? I can … I think.
Orders are placed with the chit they provide. I like that they always have a fresh one for us the moment they take away our order — no delaying tactics like some places who has every trick in the book to make you wait. The food came very fast and quite accurately too. We find that they have more choices as compared to our recent visit to Kingsway Sushi.
The AYCE costs $11 ($9 for children). On weekends and holidays, they charge $1 extra. However, they stipulated a time limit of 1.5 hours but I don’t see any signs of this being enforced. I think it’s just a provision for people who eat excessively.
The Nigiri’s are pretty good. I think this is the favourite of E-Bei’s customer. This is because the menu states that they will charge 50 cents for each unconsumed rice of any Nigiri Sushi. I guess some people ordered tons of this, removed the rice and had the fish as sashimi. LOL!
Their Nigiri is respectable in that they did not load up the Nigiri with lots of rice … it was much more raw fish than rice.
The cones (roe, spicy tuna and spicy salmon) were quite good … except that the rice was like Chinese steamed rice. Alright it might be a no-no to some people but it is more than edible. Like I said, it was quite good … for us.
The rolls were some of the ugliest and malformed rolls we had ever seen. It does not look pretty but it was OK. The bad thing here is with the color green in almost all of it. You see, our boys will refuse to touch it if it has any green color stuff (avacado or cucumber). Suanne and I ended up eating all of these.
Suanne likes the Salmon Head a lot. She is so adept in picking off the flesh. I find that their Salmon Head looks the best among all AYCE’s — big chunky pieces and fleshy.
Look at the above … that’s the remnants on Suanne’s plate. She ate everything edible … except for the …
… eyeballs! I know some people likes it.
The smelt was not that good. They use very whitish batter for this. The reason why I put this picture here was because Suanne and I have a question …
We like smelt with roes in it. We guess it is very cheap because we find these in many eating places. For some reason, we had never come across smelts with roe fresh from the supermarkets. We can’t find it in Asian markets or even at places in T&T. Do you know where we could get some?
The Octopus was served with garlic butter sauce, or so says the menu. It looked good but was somewhat too salty for our liking although we like the slight spiciness in it.
I don’t know what the above fish is called but it was quite good. We like fried fish. More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Daimasu Japanese Restaurant in Richmond
Nanzaro was away at a camp. He was none too happy when he found out that we went to a “gourmet” Japanese place for lunch on the weekend while he was away. For us, gourmet Japanese is anything that is not a AYCE.
So we went Daimasu that one weekend. Daimasu has been at this spot for as long as I remembered. What prevented us from coming to this place previously and what brought us here lately is their tagline — “A Fine Japanese Restaurant”.
Daimasu is located on Granville between No 3 and Garden City. You won’t miss it because of the imposing red sign that have up front.
In our mind this is very much a Chinese owned Japanese restaurant. We don’t know that for a fact but the workers there looked very Chinese and speaks Chinese too. So, we were surprised to see how authentic looking the decor is. We like the place as they do have a very good selection of bright and dim spots.
Apparently Daimasu has another outlet on the Burnaby portion of Kingsway. I work just a block away and I did not even realize it. I will want to check it out one day for sure.
I eyed a poster on the wall showing a new menu item which they call Sashimi Adventure. The poster said:
Dare to try our freshly imported selection of Yellow Tail (Hamachi), Wild Sockeye Salmon, Seared Mackeral (Saba), Garlic Pepper Tuna and Beef Sashimi.
Without hesitation, I ordered that … I like the “Adventure” part.
Fish Sashimi, that I can readily relate but beef sashimi? Actually this is the first time I had beef sashimi … and I must say it is very good. Normally you would get blood red meat when it is rare but not this one. It seems like they had lightly cooked the sides before it’s served.
I must give credit to the Japanese. I mean … how on earth did they managed to convince the world to call uncooked food cuisine. LOL! Suanne swears off sashimi but I love it.
The dip above is meant to go with the beef. Not exactly sure what it was though.
Between Mackeral, Hamachi and Tuna, I can hardly tell the difference between them … but am going to hazard a guess nevertheless. Let me know if I got this wrong.
The above looks like Mackeral. Although the menu said it is Seared Mackeral, it does not seem seared to me. There are quite a number of little garnishing all over the plate — all very nicely arranged. I figured that the chef would have placed the garnishings next to the sashimi pieces that they are meant to go along.
Seeing that the Mackeral is split in the middle, I took some of the greenish and orangey stuff (help me describe the orangey stuff here!) and sandwich it between the fish. Mmm … mmm … fresh.
