There’s a new mini Japanese eatery in town by the name of Shishinori, located along Cambie Street! I was walking along Cambie one day, when their unique menu design caught my eye. I ended up coming back here a week later to try out their dishes.

Unfortunately, Sangria didn’t have time to sit down and eat here so we opted for take out instead. Though our visit was short, it was quite pleasant and the worker that day was very friendly.

They serve Japanese style cooked lunches, so you will not be finding sushi or rolls or anything like that there. Nonetheless, the food was delicious and I would love to come back again!

This is the menu from the outside; I haven’t seen many menus displayed like this before! Definitely a great way for the restaurant to grab attention, as it would be fairly unnoticeable without.

Since we ordered takeout, I’m not too sure if it is the same concept as Basho, where you pay for your dish first and then they deliver it to you at the table.

Shishinori’s interior has a lot of wooden design elements. The tables were wooden, and some of the utensils were as well. The place looked very clean and cute, they had a small tray by the door where customers were able to fill up their own water.

They also had a screen projector that played Anime shows, as you can kind of tell from the picture above. We arrived there around 11am, and we were the only customers so far.

There was a small mix-up with our takeout order, we orderded three dishes but she thought we only had two. But the worker was very nice about it and had our third dish ready to go in less than 5 minutes. My friend and I took that time to snap some cute pictures of the place 🙂

Curry chicken bowl with brown rice and spinach salad ($8? $9? Somewhere around that price). Brown rice is their standard, a plus for all the health conscious peeps out there! The curry was really delicious and flavourful, with a generous amount of chicken in it and the meat was also lean.

The salad was amazing. I’m normally not a fan of salad, but I ate every last leaf. I’m not sure what sauce they used, but it was really good and the fresh peppercorn really enhanced the flavours of the sauce.

The veggies themselves were really crunchy too. Initially, when I looked at the box, I wondered if it would be filling enough since I was pretty hungry that day. I didn’t think it would be, but I was actually really full from it. So yummy!
Sangria’s salmon carpaccio. It came with smoked salmon, the same salad as mine on top of a bed of rice. She didn’t have any complaints about it and thought it was good too. I didn’t get to try hers, but judging from the amount of fresh peppercorn on the salmon, it looks really good!

However, she was really thirsty after her meal and ended up drinking two large ice waters immediately after.

Cinnamon’s wild salmon paradise bowl ($12). She really enjoyed her bowl and noted that there were three different types of seaweed inside her salad. Again, her salad was the same and she found the peppercorn to be pretty spicy, but very delicious.

All in all, I really enjoyed my curry chicken bowl at Shishinori. It was very filling and the flavours were really strong. Everything tasted super fresh in my dish, from the peppercorn to the veggies in the salad.

Apart from their lunch bowls and sets, they also have different flavours of iced tea, which looked good.

They also have matcha yogurt parfaits, which are perfect for a late afternoon treat! They don’t have matcha lattes anymore though, the worker told me that it took too long to make so they opted for the parfaits instead.

Shishinori is very promising and has the potential to be as popular as the other Japanese pastry cafe, Basho except for healthy, full meal sets. I will be back! 🙂

-Carmen