When our usual sushi delivery restaurant was closed for the holidays, the boyfriend and I came across Naruto Sushi and decided to give it a try. They offered free delivery over $20, which is always a plus.

The dishes we ordered were pretty decent, so for our next catchup, I suggested this place to Avocado because it was a convenient meeting location for the both of us.

Naruto Sushi is a pretty small restaurant along Commercial Drive. They were quite popular for takeout. During our dinner, we saw a constant, steady flow of customers picking up orders.

Parking is pretty hard on this side of Commercial and I’m not really sure where you would find parking!

Free miso soup: Our roll combo came with a miso soup. Despite telling the waitress that we were sharing, she didn’t give us an extra bowl or spoon… but when we asked, she came back with another free miso soup so that was nice!

No complaints about the miso soup. It was pretty standard, with a bit more tofu and seaweed on the bottom than I would expect from a free soup.

Roll combo: We shared a roll combo which came with california roll, Tokyo roll, and sunshine roll.

California roll: The California roll was pretty decent, no complaints about it. Avocado was nice and ripe!

Tokyo roll: The ‘Tokyo’ roll was basically just a salmon avocado roll. It was decent with a generous filling of sashimi, but we thought it would be a bit more special, I guess?

Sunshine roll: The sunshine roll came with shrimp tempura, mango, avocado wrapped in soy paper. It sounded more delicious on the menu. Basically a dynamite roll with soy paper because there was only a teeny bit of mango in it that you couldn’t really taste.

On the menu, it said that it came with prawn and did not mention it was actually tempura. If I had known it was tempura, I wouldn’t have ordered it because my stomach reacts badly to fried foods so I was a bit disappointed. Because of that, I only had one piece.

Sashimi salad: This was my favourite dish of the night. The veggies were all fresh and crunchy. I really liked the sauce they used, which was like a ginger-garlic-miso sauce?

In addition, there were a few pieces of ripe avocado. Underneath the greens, there were also a bit more sashimi pieces.

Chopped scallop roll: The chopped scallop roll was pretty decent too, no complaints about it. There was a decent amount of scallop inside.

Overall, our dinner at Naruto was not bad. The rolls were decent and had a good amount of filling, although I wish they would have been more specific in their menu for those with dietary restrictions.

Here is a photo of delivery that the boyfriend and I got a couple weeks before my restaurant visit! He was really impressed that the BC Roll actually came with salmon meat, as opposed to just salmon skin.

Mmmm, that wild salsmon sashimi. Look at that glisten! This was delicious.

I would probably only order delivery again, because we found the service here to be quite slow and borderline rude despite it not being super busy. I enjoyed delivery more than the dine-in experience.

The last post of 2018!

Another year, another year wiser. For my birthday this year, I wanted some delicious, high quality Japanese food and found Bistro Sakana!

Bistro Sakana is located in Yaletown, right across from Minami. I considered going to Minami as well, but in the end I rather try a place that I haven’t been before.

Despite being a cold, rainy December night, their patio was open and started to fill out throughout the evening. It is all covered, with heat lamps above and candles at each table.

The inside of the restaurant with an open view of the sushi chefs.

Premium omakase sashimi elite set: I love, love, love omakase! I am indecisive when it comes to sushi (just ask the boyfriend how many times I ask him to select our rolls heh) and don’t really know the different types of high quality sashimi. Anyways, the elite set is the smaller omakase which has 10 pieces of sashimi. You can also order the prime set which has a lot more sashimi and is $100.00.

The selection of sashimi that day, starting from right to left was: shima-aji (striped jack), hamachi (amberjack), blue fin tuna, rockfish, and hirame (flounder).

They were all delicious and fresh – exactly what I wanted!

Assorted nigiri: I asked the boyfriend to select some nigiri for us since I am so indecisive when it comes to sushi. He made an excellent choice in ordering two wild salmon, seabream, hamachi, and hamachi toro.

I was excited to dig in to the wild salmon because it looked deliciously fatty, but it wasn’t that fatty and quite lean. My favourite was probably the two hamachi because of the strong fishy taste and richness.

They also had freshly grated wasabi. It was very potent and a tiny amount made our eyes water!

Blue fin combo: Oh. my. GOD. This was both of our favourite that evening – assorted blue fin nigiri. The taste of this brought us right back to Japan… which makes sense because it was freshly imported from Toyosu Fish Market (used to be the famous Tsujiki Fish Market but they moved and changed names).

So rich, buttery, and fresh. Although it cost double in Vancouver due to the import cost, I would definitely come back on a special occasion.

Ora king salmon set: Our last set of the evening! It was good, but after the amazing blue fin combo… we definitely preferred the blue fin. The last piece was torched in mayo, so it smelled nice but it was a bit too saucy for my liking. I like my sashimi plain and simple.

Overall, we had a delicious dinner at Bistro Sakana. The only minor complaint was that we both found the nigiri rice to be a bit hard, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. It’s a bit under the radar but it’s worth checking out.