japanese Archives - Page 11 of 12

Ramen Sanpachi (Benkei Ramen vs. Ramen Sanpachi)

April 19, 2014 1 Comment

People say it’s hard to mess up ramen because it’s just broth, and noodles but there’s much more to it. The broth should be made from good ingredients and from scratch, or it’s not going to taste good. My visit to Ramen Sanpachi fell short, and I was disappointed with the broth and questioned it’s authenticity.
We decided to come here since David’s been here before and he liked it. We found meter parking pretty easily. I was a bit confused because in the picture, it looks like Sanpachi is the smaller restaurant on the left, right? But turns out, the right side is part of the restaurant too… talk about change in style. I thought it was two different restaurants, but when I read the hirigana on Google street view (what basic Japanese I know came in handy, heh), it was the same place! Weird.
We were expecting it to be busy since it was Friday evening, but there were only two other tables. When we first came in, I noticed a sign advertising their “Taiwanese beef noodles”… I saw that as a warning sign to its “authenticity” but I decided to overlook it. I also read reviews on Urbanspoon that this place wasn’t authentic, because one of the servers asked if they could speak Chinese to the customer because it was easier. Another person also noted that this place seemed like it tried really hard to be “modern” and had tacky leftover Xmas lights, which I saw. Their decor definitely looked more Taiwanese, like The One or Cattle Cafe in Burnaby. More warning signs.
Here is the ramen menu. They have a story on their background, where they started in Japan and expanded internationally. Their miso broth is their specialty, and to this day, only the family knows exactly what is in the broth. A couple of the ramen dishes on the right let you chose the type of soup base you wait (miso, shoyu, shio, yatai, spicy), and come with more cha-shu pork for an extra $3 which I have never seen before at other ramen joints.
This is where the semi-disappointment begins. I settled on ordering the shio ramen because I wanted a saltier and rich broth. The first thing I noticed was how clear the broth looked, when I’m used to having creamy, and rich broth with my shio ramen. Although Benkei cheaps out on the pieces of meat they give you, they have their broth made really well and I never realized it until I came here. This broth lacked the creamy richness associated with shio ramen. It was also too salty to be tasty. The redeeming qualities about this ramen was that the ramen noodles were cooked al-dente, and their cha-shu pork was lean and there was more than what we got at Benkei . David joked that I should have gotten the noodles that came with a stick of butter, to make it more creamy and rich.
David got the cha shu ramen with miso broth ($13). I was secretly glad he ordered the miso broth since, as I mentioned above, it was their specialty and maybe it’s only the shio broth that was disappointing? His soup tasted better, and wasn’t as salty as mine. It also had more taste. His ramen came with a lot more cha shu, which was lean and well-cut as well unlike the paper thin ones we got at Benkei . If I had known beforehand, I would have ordered the miso broth since it tasted better than mine.

One of the reasons we came here was because we left Benkei Ramen a few weeks ago disappointed and wanting more value. But after coming here, I compared both restaurants and realized that Benkei wasn’t as bad. Benkei’s shio broth was better, but Sanpachi is not stingy when it comes to meat toppings, so take your pick. I have yet to figure out if Sanpachi is authentic or not, because some of the other reviews on Urbanspoon say that the chef is from Japan. After this experience, I think I will just eat at the ramen joints on the West End, at least I know I won’t be disappointed there.

Read my separate review at Benkei here 🙂

-Carmen

Tomokazu (Late night AYCE)

April 18, 2014 1 Comment

My friends and I wanted late night AYCE one night, and decided to come here. I came here a few years back and it was decent as far as AYCE goes, so we decided to come back. Overall, our visit was pleasant. We found out from trial and error which AYCE foods to order, and which to stray away from. If you want to save you and your tastebuds the hassle, keep reading on!

The restaurant is not brightly lit at all, as you can see from this picture. We actually parked at the wrong restaurant initially, because there was a Korean/Japanese restaurant on the second level two blocks down Broadway. I thought that they had just changed the exterior and added Korean food to their offering, but nope.
We came for the late night AYCE. For those who don’t know, some AYCE restaurants offer a discounted rate if you go after a certain time. For Tomokazu, it was 9:30. They do this to attract late night goers and also to get rid of food (Gosh, sounds like we’re animals eating scraps.. HAHAHA). Their late night AYCE menu isn’t as extensive as their regular menu, but it’s cheaper!
Here are the first four dishes that came, starting with the salmon and tuna sashimi. As expected, the sashimi pieces were pretty small and did not taste super fresh, but still passable. The tuna pieces in particular were really tiny, like tiny mini erasers. There is also a limit of 6 pieces of EACH sashimi that you could order per round (max 12 per round). I forgot about the miso soup and it turned cold, when I drank it it tasted pretty watery. You could tell that the spinach gomae had been in the fridge the whole day, but it was still pretty tasty due to the rich peanut butter sauce. The spinach itself did not taste bad either, it was pretty juicy. I ended up ordering 2 more orders of this because I liked how juicy and refreshing the chilled spinach was. I laughed when the salmon teriyaki came because it was so thin, but it was cooked well and decent.
Next came our rolls, which were pretty good! The salmon maki tasted like a regular roll you would order at a restaurant. The chopped scallop cone had a generous portion of scallop, we were all pretty impressed. We ordered one seafood cone because we were curious, and it was pretty good as well! It came with cooked salmon and mayo. The beside it was the BC Roll , I’m not a fan of salmon skin but my friends liked it. Next was the Tomokazu special roll which we ordered because my friend is very adventurous and has a “why not” attitude when it comes to ordering. We were glad that we ordered it since it was very tasty! We agreed that this plate alone was worth the money, because when you go to restaurants, cones are around $4 each!
All of these plates were so good! The agedashi tofu was very crispy, I’m pretty sure it was made fresh which is rare for AYCE! I didn’t try the seafood and oyster motoyakis, but my friends both loved it. It was very cheesy, and the seafood one came with a lot of salmon. I loved the chicken karage. It was crispy, well seasoned, and cooked well. We ordered a lot of them afterwards too. The korean BBQ pork was really good as well. It was seasoned and grilled perfectly and cut into small strips.
But wait, there’s more! The hokkigai tasted pretty chewy and rubbery to me, so I probably wouldn’t order this again. The beef teriyaki was very sweet, but towards the end, the remaining beef was very mushy and looked like stew. The BBQ chicken wing was good according to my friend, I was too busy eating the rest of the chicken karage to try this. Finally, the gyoza which my friend thought tasted pretty good (At this point, I was stuffed and wanted to save room for jello).
After drinking more tea and resting, we were ready to stuff ourselves with jello! My friend noted that some places keep their jello with the seafood, so it ends up tasting like fishy jello. He was happy when he found out this was not the case here. I personally never had that happen to me before, have you? And if yes, which restaurant? However, I noticed that some restaurants keep their jello out for so long that the edges of the jello become kinda hard and dry, but this was not the case either. It was pretty decent jello!

Overall, we had a great experience at AYCE. I personally came with low expectations because it’s AYCE, you can’t expect supreme quality when you’re getting as much food as you possibly can. Service was average, the workers didn’t really come to top our tea or anything, but it was fine. We ended up staying for more than 1.5 hours (the maximum time limit), but they let us sit and digest our food until they closed.

-Carmen

Sushi Mura

April 7, 2014 1 Comment

Guys, I think I found one of my new favourite sushi places! Well nothing is ever going to take Sushi Nanaimo from my #1 for cheap and delicious sushi rolls but this place doesn’t stray far. The only downside is that I’m usually never in this area, so going here would definitely be a treat or a trek. I enjoyed all of their dishes, and judging from the packed line waiting at the door, many other Vancouverites do too. My favourite dish was the deep friend California roll, as I’ll mention below. Everything was delicious and I can’t wait to come back! I also forgot the prices of the dishes, but they were pretty cheap and reasonable, I’ve included the estimated price range from what I can kinda remember (they didn’t have an online menu, boohoo).
The interior has a lot of wooden accents to it. The style reminded me of a contemporary west coast design with all the wood panels everywhere, even in the washroom! As you can tell, their interior is pretty modern and nice. Let’s move on to the food!

The first thing that we ordered was the house salad (I believe that was what it was called), which tasted like a standard salad you’d get at a Japanese restaurant, $4ish. However, we were surprised when we found a bed of vermicelli underneath the salad. I don’t like eating salad so it was a pleasant surprise for me! Usually, restaurants don’t serve vermicelli with their salads.
Next was our tuna and salmon sashimi $8-9ish. As you can tell from the pictures, the slices were quite generous and thick! My cousin also ordered a ikura nigiri (type of fish egg) which was good.
This was my second favourite dish, apart from the deep fried california roll. Their tonkatsu portion is HUGE, we were pretty surprised at how big the portion was when it came. It was only around $7 and you get so much with it! To give you a ratio, the side of rice is a standard bowl size. There were also two tonkatsu cutlets on top of each other! This was so good! It was super crispy but juicy, and I liked how they give you more sauce on the side. YUM!
Lo and behold, the deep fried California roll (Less than $5)! I’ve seen this on a couple of menus at other restaurants before, but I never felt inclined to order it because I don’t want fried food, and California rolls are average to me. But this intrigued me due to the different colours of sauce layered on top. IT WAS SO GOOD. It wasn’t as heavy as I expected it to be, since it was deep fried, but still lightly crisp. Here’s a close up:
Look at that outer tempura layer! It was so crunchy and delicious.
This was the mango and avocado roll ($4-6ish). Again, I really enjoyed this dish due to the amount of mango they had in it. It was also very sweet.
This is the red roll, chopped scallop with spicy tuna sashimi on top ($4-6ish). It tasted pretty standard, but I liked how they put fresh green onion on the top of the roll.
I forgot what this roll is, but it was basically smoked salmon, crab meat, tempura, and cucumber ($4-6ish). Again, it was pretty good. The negitoro roll ($2ish) was good as well.

All in all, I enjoyed my visit to Sushi Mura due to their delicious rolls and tonkatsu. My cousin, her husband, and I went and we were completely stuffed after eating everything. The prices are really reasonable as well. However, service is pretty slow especially since it was so busy that day. I felt so bad for the servers because impatient, grumpy, hungry customers were mad that they had to wait. Our rolls took longer to arrive too, but everything else arrived promptly. I would come back here again just for their deep fried California roll, Sushi Mura has converted me to liking deep fried rolls (never thought I would see that day..)!

-Carmen

Benkei Ramen – Broadway location

March 25, 2014 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone!

I’ve been so busy the past week so I’m finally beginning to post my food adventures again! The boyfriend has never tried this place before, so we decided to go one spontaneous afternoon. Benkei has a few locations in Vancouver, but we decided to go this one because we were in that area. It was hard for us to find parking, we ended up parking with the meter a few blocks down.

My visit was alright, but I was quite disappointed with their minimal meat portions (2 thinly cut pieces of chicken/cha shu), I don’t think the price of the ramen was justified when the bulk of it is just noodles and beansprouts.
When we first came in, the restaurant was probably 3/4 full. Their service here wasn’t as friendly as they used to be, they used to actually greet you when you walked in and smile. They seemed very rushed and that they just wanted us to eat and leave right away. I noticed that their menu changed from the last time I came here, they added some different combo options depending on which ramen bowl you pick.
I decided on getting the shio ramen, $8.50. The broth was very flavourful and they gave a generous amount of onions and beansprouts. I thought this dish was alright except for the chicken, which I was disappointed with. Instead of having the cha-shu (type of pork) with your ramen, you can substitute it for chicken which is leaner and lower in fat.

I personally prefer chicken so I opted for this, however the two slices of chicken was small and really thin. I felt like they should have been more generous with the amount of meat in their dishes.

The boyfriend ordered the miso ramen, $8.50. Again, we felt that the cha-shu portion was really small and that they could have given us more for the price we were paying. Other than that, everything tasted pretty good. He also sprinkled sesame on his noodles which gave it more flavour, I used chili paste instead.

In conclusion, we enjoyed the broth and noodles of our dishes. However, their meat portions were really small which was disappointing and I don’t feel like the price of the ramen were justified. I would probably go to Kintaro or Santouka for ramen since they have bigger portions and friendlier service.

Hime Sushi

March 15, 2014 1 Comment

The boyfriend and I came here one evening during a break between my classes. We were looking for some fast, delicious, fresh tasting sushi and after wanting to try this place for a few months, we decided to actually go. I’m glad we went because Hime Sushi serves up some really fresh and delicious sashimi, as well as other dishes. I think their sashimi was the star of the show, but their specialty rolls were delicious too.

Hime Sushi is really easy to miss when you’re driving by. The outside of the restaurant doesn’t really stand out, we were both surprised when we found out it was by Broadway and Main because we drive by this area multiple times a week, yet we’ve never noticed it until we street-viewed (is that even a verb? whatever) it. Trying to take a picture of the outside was also quite difficult to catch everything, but I tried my best.

It wasn’t too busy when we first arrived. The servers were polite, attentive, and friendly. Hime Sushi also starts you off with a small plate of chilled edamame beans. I looove edamame beans so we were off to a great start.
The first dish that came was our tuna and salmon sashimi. I’ve read on Urbanspoon that they have really fresh and juicy sashimi, so it was time to test that out. And boy, was their sashimi ever delicious! It was really fresh, juicy, and sweet – all great components to delicious sashimi. Yum! I noticed their slices of sashimi were a bit smaller than usual, but the freshness of the sashimi made up for it.
Of course, you can’t go to a new restaurant without trying their specialty rolls. This was there ocean red roll which consists of spicy tuna and green onion in the inside, with wild sockeye salmon on top. It came drizzled with hot sauce. Again, we really enjoyed this due to the quality and freshness of the sashimi. I found myself finishing off every little detail of this roll because it was so good!
Some standard rolls, starting with the salmon and avocado. This was really good due to the freshness of the salmon and avocado. Not only is their sashimi fresh, but avocado as well! The second one was the negitoro (tuna and onion) roll. We enjoyed this one too.
We ended up ordering a second time since I wasn’t completely full yet. I love tobiko. This was their tobiko roll, which I loved. Their sushi rice was really flavourful and sweet, with the right texture and the tobiko was also really crunchy.

All in all, we thoroughly loved our visit to Hime Sushi even though their portions were smaller than we were used to. Hime Sushi uses really fresh ingredients, and you can totally taste it in their dishes. I am in love with their sashimi and sushi rice. Their service was also really friendly and prompt too. We allocated one hour to eat since I had to go back to class, but we ended up finishing our meal in under 40 minutes.

-Carmen