Tag Archives: Richmond

Eat Out Restaurant Review

Sakura Sushi

Feels like for­ever since I wrote a restau­rant expe­ri­ence post here. I was quite busy prepar­ing for the Baker’s Mar­ket and the Make It! craft show. They all went very well, and we already have some sup­port­ers. We will be doing another mar­ket near Christ­mas time — super excited! I will be post­ing more details as the date is closer.

Tuna Goma-ae — $5.75

Any­ways, onto a post that was meant to be writ­ten much ear­lier than now. Did I tell you that I love sushi? It is not that sur­pris­ing because sushi and/or Japan­ese restau­rants are to be found almost every­where in Van­cou­ver. This post is a sum­mary of my sev­eral vis­its to Sakura Sushi, located in plaza on No.3 Road in Rich­mond BC. The first time I vis­ited this restau­rant was about a year ago. I was a bit skep­ti­cal when I first went because the place is so small, which made me won­der how much they had to offer. This is sort of a hid­den gem, maybe not so much any­more because it has became more busy lately. The restau­rant is run by Japan­ese peo­ple, serv­ing up some authen­tic flavours. It is quite a tiny place, it can maybe accom­mo­date about 15 peo­ple. So you can’t always find seats there, some­times we just like to get take-out and enjoy at home.

The photo above is the Tuna Goma-ae, it is one of my rec­om­men­da­tions for Sakura Sushi, I haven’t seen this dish else­where (at least yet). If you like the flavour of toasted sesame, you will like this. The ten­der and almost lus­cious tuna here goes very well with the sesame sauce because the tuna itself is not super flavour­ful so the sesame added the nec­es­sary taste and flavours.

Chopped Scal­lop Roll — $3.75
Sakura Roll — $5.50

My other rec­om­men­da­tion the Sakura Roll, it is their orig­i­nal house roll, what they call the “Cana­dian Futomaki”. I actu­ally quite enjoy well made Futomaki though I haven’t tried theirs. So the Sakura Roll con­sists of imi­ta­tion crab meat (the ones found in Cal­i­for­nia rolls), salmon, tuna, Japan­ese sweet­ened omelette, avo­cado and cucum­bers. Because all the fill­ing is so mild tast­ing, you can taste all of the indi­vid­ual ingre­di­ents, though it might take more than one bite to eat the whole piece. Maybe it is the sweet­ness of the omelette and imi­ta­tion crab meat that I like. The chopped scal­lop was also tasty and fresh, but noth­ing extraordinary.

House Salad — $3

My third rec­om­men­da­tion is their House Salad, and by the way, all these rec­om­men­da­tions are just my own opin­ion. What I like about this salad is hon­estly its sim­plic­ity. It is just fresh greens, some avo­cado with shred­ded daikon and car­rots. But the dif­fer­ence was in the dress­ing, I can­not really tell all the ingre­di­ents in it but there is def­i­nitely miso. It is a deli­cious Asian style dress­ing, it is not acidic, it is rather salty and a tiny bit sweet.

Avo­cado Roll — $3.25

You can never go wrong with the avo­cado roll, it is just sim­ple and good.

Salmon Avo­cado Roll — $4.25

And adding salmon to it? Even bet­ter, the tex­ture and rich­ness of the salmon and avo­cado pairs perfectly.

Tuna Tataki

The tuna tataki was good and refresh­ing with the ponzu sauce.

Unagi Tam­ago Roll — $4.50

Like my com­ment with the Sakura Roll, I like the sweet­ness of this com­bi­na­tion of unagi and omelette. The unagi sauce also adds a nice touch.

Over­all, I enjoyed my vis­its to Sakura Sushi, their authen­tic Japan­ese flavours and ingre­di­ents. I really like that their food is also very afford­able, and with that qual­ity, it is a no-brainer that I will be vis­it­ing again. If you are vis­it­ing, be sure to check their hours of oper­a­tion, they are closed 7pm daily and for Sun­days and holidays.

Sakura Sushi on Urbanspoon

Eat Out Restaurant Review

Dine Out 2012: Pier 73

I orig­i­nally planned two Dine Outs this year, but I was only able to go to one which was at Pier 73. It is located in the Delta Van­cou­ver Air­port Hotel. I was try­ing to stay fru­gal so I chose the $18 menu at Pier 73 (in Rich­mond hence easy to go to for me and my par­ents). Unfor­tu­nately, we didn’t have a good din­ing expe­ri­ence there. :( I think it is kind of sad to do a bad job at Dine Out because the idea is that the restau­rant can show­case their dishes and to pro­mote their food, ser­vices etc.

Pier 73 Dine Out 2012 Menu $18/person

The menu for Dine Out, we chose the Salad, Man­hat­tan Style Clam Chow­der, Roasted Pork Ten­der­loin and Grilled Sock­eye Salmon.

Baby Spinach Goat Cheese Salad

The salad was prob­a­bly the best out of all the food I had here, which is sad. It had fresh greens, toma­toes, goat cheese, pecans and canned man­darins tossed in a light dressing.

Pier Sig­na­ture Clam Chowder

Hon­estly, I don’t know why they call it “sig­na­ture” if they don’t do a good job of it because it was way too salty! It was dif­fi­cult to taste the other flavours other than the salt. It wasn’t hor­ri­ble but def­i­nitely over-seasoned.

Grilled Sock­eye Salmon

The salmon looked bet­ter than it tasted. The risotto was very soggy, didn’t have that al dente tex­ture, it also seemed a bit greasy. It came with some bland blanched veg­gies and some arugula salad. The salmon was a lit­tle over-cooked and didn’t have much of any flavour — I would say it was under-seasoned. I didn’t taste lemon at all even though there was sup­posed to be lemon butter.

Roasted Pork Tenderloin

The pota­toes were the best of this dish, the other com­po­nents were not-so-good. I think the biggest prob­lem I had with it was that the ten­der­loin was over-cooked, so it was not ten­der at all and was dried out. The red wine sauce and the raisin chut­ney helped a lit­tle but over­all it wasn’t great. It also came with some blanched asparagus.

Mocha Bai­leys Mousse Cake

As a per­son who loves to bake, I think it is not easy to mess up sim­ple desserts like this (maybe not true but that is my opin­ion). I always think that if a restau­rant serves bad desserts, then other dishes can’t be much bet­ter. So the desserts weren’t very good. The mousse cake tasted okay, but I couldn’t taste Bailey’s and the stewed cher­ries kind of tasted like some­thing that came out of a can — I would rather have the cake with­out it.

Spiced Cheese­cake

The cheese­cake was okay, but the cran­berry com­pote was very sour — I per­son­ally think it didn’t go well with the acid­ity of the cream cheese. Noth­ing spe­cial about this, I think a good old New York cheese­cake would have been better.

I wasn’t expect­ing any­thing over-the-top for a $18 menu, but I think over­all the food was pre­pared poorly. Not that it tasted ter­ri­ble, I think it could have been much bet­ter if the dishes were pre­pared with more atten­tion. Not to men­tion that the ser­vice was slow that night, it was a busy night, but we waited quite a while for our food.

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 3/5 (we sat by the win­dow over­see­ing the water­front, but restau­rant had poor light­ing)
Food: 2/5
Ser­vice: 2.5/5 (waited a long time for food)
Value: 2.5/5

Pier 73 on Urbanspoon

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