One More Sushi

Mazui desu.  Mazui.  After class, some of us decided to go to the village in search of food, and it was suggested we visit One More Sushi....and this will be THE VERY LAST TIME.  I've been here before, ages ago, in a fairly large group, but I don't remember it being this bad.  Now, before I invest too much time into this place, I'll just get to the nitty gritty.

I made the mistake of ordering their chirashi don, my standard gauge for a good sushi restaurant.  Anyway, after having One More Sushi's chirashi don, I have come to the conclusion that they could be classified as a Japanese restaurant, but sushi would be a far stretch.  Their cooked food may be okay, I will never know, but for $15, you're literally getting ripped off on the chirashi don.  There is a mountain of densely packed rice underneath at the bottom of the bowl.  The rice smelled of rice vinegar, but it was hard, as if it had been leftover rice from two days ago.  It was clearly not very fresh.  The cuts of fish were very run of the mill, and I can't believe they have the 'nads to charge $15.  There was some salmon, some tuna (the plain stuff), tako, surf clam, some bland tamago, fake crab meat, ebi and some masago.  NOTHING SPECIAL TO NOTE OF HERE.  Even the fake crab meat was hard. 

One More Sushi is an epic fail in the sushi department, and no, I will not bother returning to see if they're cooked food is any good.

Sushi King revisited

Haha, this is the month of revisits!  I really should get out there and try some new stuff....apologies to my readers (as if I have a huge following, lol!) for boring you to death with the same routine.  I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before, but Sushi King is one of our regular stops after practice on Friday nights.  I used to go with everyone religiously until Marpole Community Centre shifted the schedule to Wednesday nights.  But I hear classes will be back to Friday nights in the fall, so looks like I'll be going back more often!

I took my parents here a week ago and the maanger Cindy was soo good to us....it's nothing new, because she's always great, but this time, she knew my parents were with me, so she really made sure they were comfortable.  My parents left very happy with everything from the food to the service. 

The salad comes with artificial crab meat, but it still tasted great.  Throw in some avacados and mayo and you got yourself a California roll salad!  Their dressing is made in house and is perfect for any green salad.  I wish they sold it.

I ordered up some sashimi for my parents (I usually stick to the nigiri or maki sushi here) and they were quite happy with the freshness and portions. 

And instead of the regular miso soup, I got them something different.  The bowl was practically full of clams, each one was as tender as ever and it wasn't a fight to get the meat out.  I think it should be illegal to serve miso soup without clams in it, haha!

I also ordered a few of my usual favourites - spicy tuna roll (Yup, I'm still quite addicted to this creation that will probably never be found in Japan), toro, saba, unagi, hotate, ikura, and botan-ebi. 

It's hard to tell in the pic, but the botan-ebi comes with the head.  It doesn't usually because most people don't really appreciate the stuff inside ebi heads, but I make sure I ask, and it comes. 

My mom loves tempura, so we ordered an assortment of that as well.  Their tempura sauce isn't quite right, but it works.  It's more like sweetened tonkatsu sauce, but like I said, it ain't bad. 

I happened to really like broccoli tempura.  I don't eat enough greens and I know this isn't the best method of getting your daily does of veggies, but hey, it's better than nothing!

Sushi King is still the best bang for your buck.  I'm not sure about other locations, but the location on Granville has my loyalty because of the consistent excellent customer service (Thanks Cindy), the rest of the staff and the chef of course.  I look forward to September when we'll probably end up visiting every Friday!

Red Top Restaurant - Merritt

Sushi in Merritt, what the....I'd say it's a safe to guess that Red Top Restaurant may be the only game in town as far as Japanese food is concerned, but I really don't know.  I'm not often in Merrit and the last time I was there, I was going up to Kelowna for a car show and my car broke down (numerous times)....one of my stops landed me up overnighting in Merritt.  On the way back, my group decided to make a pit stop in Merritt for food and we pulled into Red Top Restaurant.  From the outside, there was no indication it served Asian food, let alone Japanese/Sushi.

When we pulled in, our group of 1st generation Honda Civics grabbed a lot of attention from the locals.  Once we got inside, we discovered that though it was a Japanese/sushi restaurant, our cars were pretty much the only things in town that were made in Japan.

I didn't try my standard guage for a good sushi restaurant (Chirashi don) this time because I didn't think it was worthwhile.  How fresh could seafood possibly be this far inland?  But still, I was craving some sushi, so I just settled on a bento box.  It came with a decent assortment of sushi that was recently defrosted (so that's about as fresh as you're going to get), some tempura, a green salad of some sort, some deep-fried gyoza (very un-Japanese), and miso soup. 

Some of my friends stuck with the safer items like California rolls, tempura, salad and deep fried gyoza.  Kill it with hot oil.

My meal was pretty filliing actually, and I didn't get sick after eating it so the seafood must have been recently defrosted and probably stored well.  I was surprised to get ika (squid) as part of the nigiri sushi assortment, but it was a nice surprise.  The salad was pretty basic, and the batter for the tempura was slightly undercooked.  Deep-fried gyoza.......sigh.  Only in Chinese and Korean restaurants.    The miso soup  was pretty standard.  Anyway, it wasn't too expensive overall, so yeah, I'd probably go back if we stopped through Merritt again.

One thing that kind of irked me was that they didn't have Korean food on the menu.  Why Korean?  Because half-way through our meal, a busload of Korean tourists entered the restaurant and filled the place up.  The little steel rice bowls came pouring out of the kitchen, along with the little steel chopsticks, all the side dishes (sweet potato, bean sprouts, KIM CHI, etc).  WTF?  If I knew there was Korean food available, I would have ordered that!  It's not that I have a preference for Korean food over Japanese, but the Korean food served to the tour group looked pretty damn good....Oh well, next time I'm there, I'll see if I can get some Gahl Bee and a steel bowl of rice.

Octopus Garden

One of the places my Iaido sensei - Inoue Hironori likes to go is Octopus Garden.  Actually, let's go back in time a few years.  Before he was my Iaido sensei, he was just "Hiro", one of the founding members of the Vancouver Japanese Sword Appreciation Club.  I met him over 10 years ago when I first joined the club, and Octopus Garden was a regular place to go after our monthly meetings.  I would not join them because at the time, I was a starving college student and didn't even drive at the time.  After enrolling in his iaido class about four years ago, we'd go to Octopus Garden for special occassions such as birthdays and farewells.  It got a bit expensive for most people and after a while our visits sort of dropped off.

The VJSAC fell apart sometime last year, and my last visit to Octopus Garden was after one of those events. 

Me and Ritchard T., from class, tagging along with the grown-ups.

Daniel (left), a sword polisher from Japan (centre), and Inoue Sensei (right).

Complimentary tako salad.

Edamame, the usual compliment to beer and sake.

Agedashi tufu, another common dish in most local Japanese restaurants.

Some sort of fusion something or other.

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Some good old, regular assorted nigiri sushi.

A deep fried roll...starting to be a trend here in Vancouver.
Natto...yech.

Dragon/catapillar roll....

The food is pretty damn good at Octopus Garden.  It's authentic in the way that the ownership, the prep and staff are all Japanese, but the food itself has a foot in the door for fusion.  For example, the first time I EVER had foie gras was at Octopus Garden...Foie Gras Nigiri Sushi.  I fell in love with foie gras that night, and added it to my list of must have's for my last meal on earth, ethics be damned.  The service is pretty friendly as well, and the food arrives quickly (when it's not busy). 

One thing I'd like to add is that I saw my favourite sake here - Koshi no Kanbai....the only problem was it was selling at $300 for the 1.8 litre bottle....for the price of 4 bottles, I could fly back to Japan and bring back 4 of my own.  Sadly, Ocotpus Garden is overall a little bit too pricy for me at the moment and I can't afford to go there as often as I'd like. 

Deli Nippon

Someone told me they felt very "natsukashi" when it came to the ramen, and it reminded them of home...not just Japan, but their own home when their mom made ramen for them.  For me, I can say I liked it.  It defintely had a home-made taste to it, and wasn't nearly as greasy and fatty as some other places (actually, I prefer the extra fat in the broth and the extra fat chashu), but for $7.45, it was a nice, cheaper (and probably less abusive on my heart) alternative.

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My group and I were there for the ramen, but Deli Nippon's specialty isn't ramen, and not is it sushi either.  It's actually okonomiyaki.  But for some reason, word is getting around that this place is really good for ramen.  Well, it is and it isn't.  Like I said, their speciality isn't ramen, but they make a decent bowl.  It's not on par with places like G-Men or even Benkei, but that's okay, they don't proclaim themselves to be.  If you're looking for that home-made taste, here it is.  If you're looking for a greasy bowl of salt (like I prefer), then try somewhere else. 

The sushi is okay here, there's a lot of rice, show it's pretty clear they don't specialize in sushi.  Our server (and probably the manager or owner) looked like he belonged in a Kurasawa movie than a little eatery.  I'm not kidding you, he had a striking resemblance to Mifune Toshiro, except stockier.  He was nice enough, but he was a man few words....more like grunts from the hara (where samurai believe the soul resides). 

I tried their okonomiyaki, and it's pretty good.  They have a couple of varieties and the price is pretty decent.  If I were in the area, I'd definitely stop by again.