First meal in Vancouver was a late night trip to Gyoza King with Geoff and Tiff. They serve a variety of different gyoza as well as a bunch of small plate dishes, from noodles to sashimi to anything.

negitoro - chopped tuna with green onion, quail egg & seaweed - C$4.95

bonito sashimi - C$7.95

hotate kinoko - stir fried fresh scallops with assorted mushrooms in garlic butter - C$6.25 Very good. The negitoro is tasty, but when it comes down to it I'd still rather have it in a cone with rice (rather than just wrapped with seaweed). The bonito (aka katsuo) is not listed on the menu but it's a frequent special, and worth getting. The ponzu sauce and onions are delicious together with the fish. The hotate is wonderful, thanks to the liberal use of garlic butter. The scallops were tender and the mushrooms absorb that garlic butter like nothing else.

ganso (pork & vegetable) gyoza - C$5.95 (10 pieces)

mentaiko yakiudon - pan fried udon with spicy cod roe & butter - C$8.50 The gyoza are fresh and homemade. The wrapping has a firm, chewy texture, and the filling is searing hot. They're nicely-fried and crisp on the bottom. The udon was the highlight of the meal, and for me pretty unexpected. It was extremely rich and buttery and simply delicious. To draw a far-fetched comparison, it was almost like a Japanese version of a good, buttery, fettucine alfredo. It was the first time I've tried udon like this, though Tiff tells me a lot of places are do something similar. I want to try the clam/garlic yakiudon on the menu, but if I go again i doubt I'll be able to resist ordering the same thing...

Finally, my last set of pictures from Vancouver. This is a late night meal at Hapa Izakaya, a Japanese place on Robson.


ebi mayo - deep fried shrimp


aburi shime saba - fresh mackerel seared at your table


negitoro with garlic toast


kakuni - slow simmered chinese pork with steamed buns


ishi-yaki - rice, pork, garlic, egg, tomato, and miso cooked at the table in a korean hot stone bowl This was sort of my second dinner, so I wasn't that hungry, but this stuff was good. The shrimp was a little standard... nothing special. I'm not usually a big fan of saba but Geoff likes it and he said this was good. It was cool watching them sear it, and it tasted good too. Still raw for the most part but smoky on the outside and less of the fishiness that usually comes with saba. The negitoro was more like a tuna tartare type of thing than a traditional negitoro, but good anyway. We ordered the kakuni out of curiousity, half expecting cha siu bao. This turned out to be really delicious, but the piece of pork was probably the fattiest/oiliest/greasiest thing I've eaten in a long time. Weak eaters be warned. The ishi-yaki was really good too - the egg is raw when they bring it to you and everything cooks in the stone pot, basically like a bibimbap (the picture is taken after everything's been mixed up). By then we were too full and could only finish half of it. The restaurant looks really cool and hip inside. Izakaya apparently translates roughly to "bistro" and serves a bunch of shared smallish dishes as well as lots of drinks. Great deal too... each dish was only about $7 Canadian.

We tried a new Japanese place in Vancouver... Miko on Robson. Pictures didn't turn out so good but I've got the sushi.


bbq black cod

anago, negitoro temaki, uni, BC roll, tamago, hamachi, tako, toro Pretty good. Sushi was not as good as at Ajisai. The hot food was pretty good though. The BBQ black cod was great. They have a lot of photos on the walls with celebrity autographs, with lots of Canucks in particular.

Final meal from Vancouver was a lunch at Shiro. They have crazy deals on lunch sets.


lunch set: katsu-don, tempura, salmon and tuna sashimi, tekka roll, BC roll, gomae All that for freakin $11 Canadian. That's like 8 bucks. I couldn't finish it, and it was good too. Vancouver is ridiculous.

Last time I was in Vancouver, Geoff tried to take me to Gyoza King twice but both times they were closed. One of the times, they were closed for one day for some kind of cleaning/renovation. Now there's luck. This time we finally went though...


bonito sashimi


stir-fried scallops with mushrooms and garlic butter


pork gyoza


pork "toro" It was quite good. The bonito sashimi was huge - we actually both ate a piece before I remembered to take that picture. The scallops were good too... they used two kinds of mushrooms in it. We had two kinds of gyoza, pork/vegetable and pork/chives. The chive one tasted too much like Chinese dumplings... we both agreed the vegetable was better. Not as good as Sapporo though, of course. We saw pork "toro" on the menu and we were curious about it. It turned out to be some kind of cha siu with some sauce on it. It was actually pretty good. A bit salty, but at 3 something Canadian it's not like we got ripped off.