Van-Ya Japanese Restaurant
5615 Harold St, Vancouver
604-433-1303

With all the craze for sushi, izakaya and ramen shops in Vancouver, one would wonder if there is any other Japanese type of food. Of course there is, it is more of a matter of you finding them. That’s what brought me to Van-Ya, where, although it serves sushi, its focus seems to be more on the lines of grilled/broiled items and teishouku, or set meals and grilled like items.

Located near Joyce and Kingsway (though not in the main street itself, full address at the end of this post), Van-Ya is located in a somewhat inconspicuous place. In fact, I missed it a couple of times whe trying to get there…

Notice the sushi prep area, with a chair in front of it… A side-note to those who care about this: Van-Ya is runned by Japanese, as you could hear them “shouting” the order in Japanese.

I chose to go a Sunday night to go, as the following day I would be travelling out of town (no dishes no cleaning, you know…). Although the picture above would seem to indicate the place was empty, in reality that was not the case. About 2/3 of the tables were occupied and other customers came and went in the meantime.

As for the food, I ordered two items: Gomae (a Spinach salad with sesame paste) and sanma teishoku, i.e., a pike mackerel set meal. After 10 or so minutes, the food started to show up.

The almost always present miso soup…

Gomae or spinach salad with sesame paste

And my meal arrived…

A close-up of the pike mackerel with some grated daikon radish

A close-up of the age-tofu, fried tofu with dashi broth.

A close-up of the side dishes, the one to the left is green beans; to the left, I think it is seaweed.

I must mention this, I have a really odd love/hate relationship with mackerel. I don’t like them sometimes because of the bitterness but I also like them because of a meatier taste compared to other fishes.

Overall the meal was quite good, specially because there was a mix of flavours and textures: bitter and flaky from the mackerel, slightly sweet and crunchy from the beans and seaweed, savoury from the tofu (actually from the dashi broth) and a blank palette from the rice. And, oh, the daikon which provided something refreshing. Aside from this, there was something even better: the price. The gomae was $2.75 and the set meal was $8. This and the fact there were other dishes that caught my attention at that moment, I will definetely consider coming back again.

Finally, the location. The exact address is 5615 Harold Street, Vancouver, the street after Joyce (going eastbound). If you are driving from Kingsway (like I did), you will find the restaurant as soon as you turn into Harold. If you are at a point of being able to turn to the London Drugs parking lot, you are already past Van-Ya. In my case, it was worth the extra effort trying to find it.