Yoshi
689 Denman St
Vancouver, BC V6G

We had an out-of-town guest and, in an odd twist, our guest (from Texas) wanted sushi for lunch. We were in the West End area and ended up in a really odd situation. Although we are aware of a lot of sushi places, going from good to bad, the problem was rather, which one to go? After all, we wanted to make sure our guest left with a good impression of Vancouver (opposite from the reaction I had when I was in Baltimore). After discussing for a while, we settled up for Yoshi…

One thing that caught my attention on this sign… Kaiseki lunch? Is this for real? No, I did not ended up ordering that but, it was something worth mentioning…

We arrived relatively early. In fact, it was not even officially open yet but, rather than send us back, they let us stay inside until the tables were set. The shot above was about 10 minutes after we were seated from the table in the far corner of the restaurant. Oh, on an odd note, Yoshi’s site mention the main chef is Japanese, we heard some Cantonese conversion going on… Anyway, we took a while to order, as some had a hard time deciding what to order. The waitress was not intrusive at all during this time so, from that perspective, it was really appreciated.

Not your usual soy sauce bottle.

Suki-dayo!

Colleague #1 ordered nabeyaki udon ($10.50), a hot-pot like soup with udon noodles. The oddity was the fact it had tempura, you know, something with a crunchy/fried texture on soup, which would make it soggy… Regardless, colleague #1 gave it thumbs up.

Sorry this is a bad picture, as it does not give a good shot of the food… This is their lunch combo A, assorted sashimi, daily sushi, assorted tempura and soba (buckwheat noodles) in soup ($13). This was given thumbs up, also, except for one note (see below regarding my own lunch).

Colleague #3 ordered the ichimatsu bento ($16.50): 2 Kinds of daily appetizers, assorted sashimi, tuna and salmon sushi, sunomono, california roll, BBQ item, hassun, miso soup. Does it look good? Yup, in a way, I wish I also had the stomach to eat this also (in addition to my own lunch!).

This is what our guest and another colleague ordered: Assorted sushi. Our out-of-town guest was really impressed by both the presentation and taste. I hope we did not raise the bar too high!

Finally, my lunch. Good looking enough I was not sure if I wanted to eat it! I had their lunch combo B ($13), which had assorted sashimi, daily sushi, BBQ chicken and udon in soup.

A close-up of the daily sushi. In this case, it was tuna roll and spider roll (a roll with tempura in it). It was decent in the sense I couldn’t find anything different from your corner tuna roll; however, the tuna roll had a bit too much wasabi for my colleague’s liking (who also had tuna roll). The spider roll… Well, I am not sure why people like it. Rather than making a tempura out of the shrimp, can I have some sweet shrimp instead?

Now, one thing you might have noticed by now is the yellow “thing” at the bottom left of the picture. That’s the gari, aka, pickled ginger. For once, not the usual pink-y coloured pickled ginger!

The sashimi, two pieces of salmon (sorry, I was a bit too hungry by then and nibbled one of the salmon pieces), two pieces of tuna and one slice of octopus. Presentation was quite good. Texture and taste-wise, this one is way better than the one found in Baltimore.

Overall, the lunch was quite good. In fact, it was better than what I expected, not to mention the price was quite reasonable. To those concerned with “authenticity”, despite that Cantonese “issue” mentioned above, I noticed other customers were Japanese so I will assume that’s a good thing. The only thing pending now is to visit Irashai Grill (located a couple of blocks away) and make a comparison…