One late night, Geoff and I were, as usual, looking for some grub. We wanted to go to Gyoza King or Hapa, but when we arrived at both they were closed. We tried the Guu next door, which was still open, but weren't taking any new seatings. Thwarted, we drove over to Richmond. We ended up trying Manzo, a Vancouver-style izakaya that happens to be open pretty late. Geoff hadn't tried it in forever, so we gave it a shot. The place was pretty empty late at night, and had the typical izakaya decor - lots of black wood. The menu has a lot of the normal izakaya stuff, but also a fairly strong focus on yakitori and other skewered bbq items - I guess that's why it's open late. 
cheese chikuwa age - C$4.95 We started off with this cheese chikuwa age, which is a sort of fishcake-like thing stuffed with cheese and deep fried. A weird combo, but it was actually pretty tasty. The cheese was stretchy like mozzarella. It was also about 8 trillion degrees, and I came pretty close to burning my whole mouth on the first bite. Luckily, I survived... 
kawa - C$3 Next came probably our most anticipated dish, kawa. Essentially, fried chicken skin on a skewer. This stuff was excellent - crispy and crackly, with a nice saltiness. My dad woulda liked this. 
beef with enoki mushrooms - C$4.95 There was some other thing we wanted to order that they had run out of, and we substituted it with this instead - beef wrapped around enoki mushrooms. I love enoki mushrooms and this is a great combo. It would have been nice if they took had taken it off the fire a few seconds earlier though. 
gyoza - C$3.95 The gyoza was average. I can't decide if I like it when they don't seal the ends. Some of the best gyoza I"ve had in Japan was done this way. On these, it felt like I was losing valuable juices that were dripping. I guess it all depends on the filling. 
mentaiko yaki udon - C$8.95 We saw mentaiko udon on the menu, and for comparison's sake we had to try it. All around, it was clearly worse than the Gyoza King version. The noodles were a bit limp and overcooked, and the sauce was more watered down and bland. It didn't have the wonderful butteriness of GK's version, and it wasn't nearly as pretty either. It was still good though - I guess mentaiko udon is sort of hard to screw up. I wouldn't order this here again though. 
bbq pork - C$4.5 This bbq pork was very good, and quite different than what the term refers to in Chinese context, as you can see. The meat was juicy, with a slight porky chewiness to the texture, and a strong flavor. Definitely a good value, too. 
onigiri with eel - $3.9 The menu had a small section of different onigiri (rice balls). This one had some unagi in the middle along with some unagi sauce. As much as I love onigiri, I didn't think this was very good - it didn't have the right balance of crispy to hard on the outside and soft on the inside.
We were still pretty satisfied with the meal. It's certainly a good option after most of the other places have closed, and you can have a really good meal if you pick right from the menu. If I go again, I'll probably lean very heavily on the bbq stuff, which clearly stood out during our meal. There was a big list of different items, and you could stuff yourself on a variety of bbq alone.