Sakari Sushi

Sakari Sushi
202-1184 Denman Street
Vancouver, BC

Sometimes, even the best laid plans will be put to a test when things happen. In my case, following post on Wok Box, I wanted to visit their new location near English Bay. The first day I tried to go, they were not open yet (“opening next Monday!”). Then, I try again on a Tuesday, they have a new sign saying “opening Wednesday!”. OK, let’s try Friday, then! At that point, when I saw the sign saying it wasn’t still open (due to unforeseeable circumstances), I just gave up and look for another place for lunch. There were some pubs but I wasn’t in mood for pub fare that day. Instead, there was this sushi place next to it: Sakari Sushi.

As seen in the picture above, it is located in the second storey, which gives a really interesting view to English Bay… If it wasn’t for the trees, that is. Regardless, it was quite a nice view, with the cars running below and so and so. The question, at that point was, would the food be at par with the view, specially considering my previous experiences which such places have been really… Bad?

Since I wanted to sit outside, I didn’t really have a chance to see inside, hear the interaction of the staff and so on. Normally I don’t do this anyway but, for Sakari Sushi, I was curious. Remember, this is Downtown/West End where, as mentioned in my Sushi Mart post last week, sushi options abound and you have to make something to distinguish yourself from the competition. In this case, the obvious edge was the view. Unfortunately, views by itself do not fill up an empty stomach and, as a result, it was then up to the food…

Your usual miso soup. Fortunately, it wasn’t too salty compared to a myriad of places I could mention.

A bento box – $10

I will have to admit that, at first, it did not look that bad, if it wasn’t upon further, closer inspection that some of the shortcomings started to show up. For instance, how about how the salad look?

Now, I won’t comment about the salad itself, I wasn’t expecting too much about it to begin with. Instead, it was the fact there was almost a watery puddle beneath it. Now, it did not really taste vinegar-y so I was thinking instead: could it they just took the greens after washing them (without draining them) and putting it on the plate? If that is the case, it was a fail.

The six pieces of salmon roll fare a bit better. The rice lacked a bit of the vinegar taste; otherwise, it was quite decent. The rice was slightly above room temperature rather than the cold rice I have tasted from other places. As for the salmon itself, OK, the colour should tell you this might not be wild salmon but, between no salmon and farmed salmon, I will take the later.

There were a total of four pieces of vegetable tempura and two pieces of shrimp tempura. On the vegetable side, there was zucchini, yam, sweet potato and what I thought was pumpkin. In both cases, batter was a bit too thick to my liking and wished it could be both warmer (just taken out of the fryer) and crispier. Hmmmmmm….

The sashimi. Actually, it wasn’t that bad; in fact, I must give them credit for making sure it didn’t have that slight frozen texture in it, the same way I have tasted it from other places (which shall remain unnamed).

Overall, given my initial thoughts of all view-bad food, it fared better than expected. However, it still lags behind in several ways. Would I go back? Unlikely, as there are still other places for me to discover and I know some places in the same area that I feel are superior to Sakari Sushi.

Tagged under: Downtown • Japanese • Sushi • Vancouver • West End