Sushi Ville has been on my must try list for maybe a year now! I heard about this place from Cocoa, who has been a few times now. We found ourselves in The Drive one afternoon, where I finally had the chance to try this place!
Parking on The Drive is kind of hard, and it is mostly pay parking. We were very lucky that afternoon to find free street parking, even though it was raining cats and dogs!
Walking in, the restaurant was very comfortable and had high ceilings. It wasn’t too busy and Cocoa said she never had to wait in line with her previous visits. There was a huge sign on the wall, as you can see in the pic, that warned customers of possible long waits because “you can’t rush perfection”. Indeed, many of the negative reviews I read about this place was that food came slowly… which was also the case for us =( So, don’t come here if you’re in a rush!
Sushi Ville has the largest selection of crazy fusion rolls I’ve seen! We read the menu for about 10-15 minutes, just trying to process all the crazy combinations they came up with! Below is one page of their special roll menu, but there were a couple other pages similar to this as well!
Many of their rolls came with sauce, so I had to double check with the kitchen to make sure they were dairy-free. Luckily, most of the sauces were mayo-based, which I could eat. People are always surprised when they find out mayo doesn’t contain dairy! It usually doesn’t, unless the restaurant decides to mix some cream or butter in there for extra flavour.
They really pay attention to the minor details here, which adds to the longer wait! When my plate arrived, it came with a shot glass of dry ice that looked awesome!
Hawaiian roll: Since Sushi Ville had so many crazy special rolls, it would be a waste not to try at least one of them! I ordered the Hawaiian roll, which came with deep fried banana, mango, avocado, and imitation crab. I actually really enjoyed this. I love bananas, and the one inside the roll was perfectly ripe. It went really well with the sweet mango slice on top, although the mango slices were very thin. The peanut and almond topping complemented the flavours well and overall, this is a great roll if you like banana!
Dynamite roll: Nothing too special about this roll, pretty average but I still enjoyed it.
Sushi Ville is known to slather a tremendous amount of sauce on their rolls, as evident in their pictures. Knowing that, I decided to order my sauce on the side and I was so glad I did. The boyfriend didn’t, and he ended up regretting it after because the sauce was too overpowering and felt heavy after awhile.
BC Roll: The boyfriend loves his BC Roll. To this day, Uomo has the best BC Rolls and this was still the case after coming to Sushi Ville.
Negitoro roll: This roll was pretty disappointing. Normally, negitoro roll is supposed to come with smushy, soft pieces of toro and then mixed with green onion. Instead, the toro was simply cut in chunks, with some green onion added here and there.
Spicy tuna tataki roll: The boyfriend loves his tuna tataki, so he chose this for his special roll. There was a good amount of spice, topped with a healthy dose of fresh onions. However, after a few pieces, he found the sauce to be a bit too much.
Spider roll: Unlike our special rolls, Cocoa’s special roll did not come with as much sauce. It was topped with tempura flakes instead. I don’t remember what it came with apart from some tempura, but Cocoa did not have any complaints about it. I also liked how there were specks of pink in the roll, although I can’t remember what it was!
She also ordered a salmon maki and and california roll, which were both average. The picture I took ended up being blurry so I just deleted it. Definitely come here for the special rolls, and not the normal maki rolls.
All in all, I enjoyed my visit to Sushi Ville and glad that I finally tried it! Although I wouldn’t come regularly because their normal rolls are under average, it is a nice place to go when you want some crazy special rolls at a decent price point. It would be good to take out-of-towners here as they get to enjoy the fusion rolls that Vancouver is known for. Service was also attentive and friendly, even though the food was really slow (which was warned by that giant poster above their sushi bar).
Yay!
Hiro Sushi is hard to miss when you’re on Hastings. It is right on the border of Vancouver and Burnaby on Boundary Road, underneath the apartment complex. The signage is bright yellow. It’s right in my neighbourhood, but I’ve never gone because there are so many sushi restaurants to pick from! That, and I read some reviews on it which said it was average, so I never bothered trying it.
We both got the “All Day Super Special”, which was $10.95 for your choice of three items and a free miso soup. I chose this instead of doing a la carte because the options seemed pretty good and worth the price.
Miso soup, $10.95 combo special: The miso soup that came with the combo was pretty watery. Nothing special about it or worth noting.
Small chicken teriyaki don, $10.95 combo special: For a “small” size, this was not small at all! I was expecting maybe just one of those small regular rice bowls, but this bowl was like the size of a soup noodle bowl. What a pleasant surprise!
Salmon & avocado roll, $10.95 combo special: Alongside the chicken teriyaki don, I chose the salmon & avocado roll. It was an excellent choice. There was a great amount of avocado and it was perfectly ripe. The salmon tasted average but I really enjoyed the creaminess and good amount of the avocado.
Beef udon, $10.95 combo special: Sangria chose the small beef udon for her cooked dish. Again, she was also surprised at how big it was! She had no complaints about it.
Salmon & avocado roll, $10.95 combo special: Sangria also ordered the salmon & avocado roll. See my comments above! This picture is closer up than mine, so you can see how much avocado there was and how ripe it was 🙂
Although we came on a Thursday evening around 8 pm, the place was still full! Luckily, we were the first in line so the wait was less than 10 minutes.
Gojiro focuses on jiro-style ramen, which is ramen that features a mountain of toppings.
Basic bakamori w/ karaage,$13.55: DAMN. LOOK AT IT! There was a generous amount of chicken karaage, loaded with a mountain of cooked beansprouts.
Basic w/ chashu, $9.95: My bowl does not look as impressive as the boyfriend’s, but it was still really delicious. We both requested the thick broth because why eat ramen otherwise?
The noodles were cooked perfectly, with a nice bounce to it. They were a bit thicker than I was used to, but still super delicious nonetheless.
So far, I’ve only tried two poke places in the city. The second place I tried was The Poke Shop, which opened a few weeks ago. It is located in Gastown, just by the steam clock.
I haven’t been to enough poke shops to judge the prices, but I would say it’s fairly average? The only other place I’ve been to is The Poke Guy, and The Poke Guy is a bit more expensive because it is ocean-wise.
After selecting your base (purple rice, white rice, zoodles, spinach, or pick half/half) and protein, it is on to the toppings! I’m not going to list them all here because there are too many! But you can see from the picture above.
Super large bowl w/ unlimited toppings, $15.95: For my two proteins, I got the albacore tuna and wild sockeye salmon. I chose purple rice as the base. Unlimited toppings were pomegranate, mango, watermelon, spinach, cucumber, corn and topped with shoyu dressing.
Here are other poke bowls that some of the food bloggers ordered!
Left to right: 3 berry & lemon soda, pineapple plantation iced tea, iced matcha green tea w/ honey, all $3 w/ poke bowl, or $4.50 solo.
Overall, The Poke Shop was good and I would recommend giving it a try! The portions are generous, while the restaurant is spacious with great interior design (a dining experience also includes the ambiance).
Prawn tempura nabeyaki udon, $11.50: The price for the udon was a bit steeper than what I normally would pay, but Ebisu is a bit more upscale. I don’t like when the tempura comes inside the soup, as it makes it soggy. We quickly took the tempura out before it got super soggy.
Miso soup, free: This came with the other dish. The miso soup was pretty standard, but I liked how it came with a good amount of tofu and seaweed inside.
Ebi sunomono, free: Again, this came with the party boat that we ordered. Both of us aren’t really big fans of ebi sunomono, but this one was pretty standard.
Chicken teriyaki boat, $14.95: Don’t let the giant boat fool you, because the boat is actually only good for one person. It looks big but it isn’t really thaaaaat much food.
Chicken karaage, $8.25: Yum, this was delicious! My stomach is pretty sensitive to oily foods though, so I only ate the small piece. However, it was very crunchy and fresh! We would definitely order this again. Although, we came back to this location a year later and the chicken karaage was not as good.