Restaurant review: This discreet speakeasy brings Blade Runner vibes to East Vancouver
Ama
Where:
3980 Fraser St., Vancouver
When:
Thursday to Sunday, 6 p.m. to late
Info:
@ama.rawbar on Instagram
Ama are Japan’s real-life mermaids, some in their 80s, who freedive for shellfish, plunging some 30 feet into cold waters for up to two minutes. Long ago, they wore only a loincloths and bandanas while diving, ideally plucking a prized oyster with a pearl. There aren’t many amas left today (and they’d be in wetsuits) but it’s always been women’s — not men’s — work because of their thicker layer of cold-busting fat.
In Vancouver, the Ama I know is a speakeasy cocktail bar on Fraser Street. A blow-up photograph of a real ama greets you as you enter the bar from a discreet orange door — discreet because the Ama sign is visible only in the dark when an amber light shines the name through cut-out letters. The place alludes to amas because the menu is Japanese with a focus on sashimi and nigiri and the seafood is largely from Japan.
The room is upstairs from the Michelin-recommended Nammos Estiatorio and run by the same owners, Yianni and Petro Kerasiotis, brothers who also operate Selene Aegean Bistro and Loula Greek restaurants. Why the deviation from Greek food? “We don’t have a kitchen up there and there’s no exhaust. We didn’t want to spend that kind of money,” says Yianni. Thus, a raw bar.
The dark but luminous space is atmospheric, sexy, even, in a way that Wallpaper magazine took notice. “It’s meant to feel like a futuristic Blade Runner type of room,” says Kerasiotis. “There are no windows. You get lost in time. There are mirrors but they’re a bit foggy.” The music — “a bit of everything” — adds to the sexy. The sound level is conversation-friendly until around 10, when it’s cranked up. Ama amps up two tasty blocks of Fraser Street that also includes Masayoshi, Nammos, Bâtard Bakery and Ernest Ice Cream, providing a critical culinary mass in an otherwise residential neighbourhood.
The 52-seat cocktail bar was designed by &Daughters and opened in December 2023, initially with Takuya Motohashi (Soyfish Private Chef) creating the opening menu. It’s not entirely devoid of hot food as they do some prep in the Nammos kitchen for dishes like uni pasta and Wagyu bacon cheeseburger.
Sean Yuen, the current chef, has previously cooked at the late farm-to-table Forage in Vancouver, at a kaiseki restaurant in Fukushima, Japan, and staged at the one-Michelin star Bo. Lan in Thailand. Although cocktail bars are common in Tokyo, matching food and cocktails was new. “It was definitely challenging at first but it clicked. Miso and soy are prominent flavours that have to hold up with the cocktails,” he says.
A horseshoe counter anchors the room and is action central for cocktails and sushi. Behind it, the cheerful sushi chef Akira Omura (Tojo’s, Cioppino, Bluewater), or “Omura-san” as Kerasiotis refers to him, works his ninja sushi skills.
The menu has some 10 items as well as the raw bar (sashimi and nigiri). My Kosmo cocktail, with watermelon Ciroc, Cointreau, and sour white cranberry, refreshing and fruity, was great with the roasted Hokkaido scallops with motoyaki sauce (a mayo, miso, sake, mirin mix), marinated edamame, topped with ikura ($24).
Uni rigatoni ($34) hums with umami, tossed in a sauce of local red uni, miso, shallots, garlic, cream, shallots and kombu, topped with Hokkaido uni and garnished with tobiko and togarashi.
The nigiri ($7 to $16) I tried featured fresh, cared-for seafood — bluefin tuna, salmon, hamachi, squid, and madai, or sea bream. The bluefin tuna — otoro (from the rich fatty belly and most desired) and chutoro (meaty and fatty) were from a farm in Kochi, Japan.
Many sushi restaurants now rely on farmed bluefin and Japan is known for its sustainable, high-quality product and lauded by organizations such as The International Marine Science and Carbon Sequestration Foundation, which has called it “a beacon of sustainable aquaculture.” The king salmon is also from a Japanese farm. “Everyone talks about the Oro farmed salmon from New Zealand (for premium quality) but our king salmon from Glory Bay in New Zealand is raised in slightly colder water and the quality’s even better,” says Yuen.
There were two types of squid nigiri, a big fin reef squid and whole baby firefly, a species unique for its bioluminescence during spawning season — they glow blue.
“Our fish come in whole, except for tuna,” says Yuen. “Sometimes it’s so fresh there’s rigor mortis left in the fish and we wait a day to use it. Our suppliers here work with brokers in Japan to get premium, top-end fish.”
They tested several rice brands for the nigiri and settled on Haenuki rice from Yamagata. “The rice has to be good and it has the best texture, a bit more bite to it,” he says.
The raw bar is boss and will stay put but there’ll be changes to the rest of the menu every few weeks. The most popular items, uni pasta, salmon hako sushi (box sushi) with house aioli and chili, and the crab dip (snow crab, tobiko, taro chips) will stay, however.
There’s only one dessert — Tahitian vanilla mousse topped with butter cookie crumble, yuzu raspberry sauce and piped balls of Chantilly cream.
A speakeasy’s got to have a solid cocktail program, and Ama doesn’t disappoint. Dylan Riches (previously at Published on Main) is bar director for the restaurant group. You’ll find Dylan Zrobek (also Published on Main) behind the bar leaning into Japanese themes, like the Game, Set, Matcha, that mixes Suntory Toki whisky with yuzu, matcha and egg white into a delicate harmony. Another concoction, the Scenic Route, combines a house gin blend with yellow chartreuse, sesame and Tan Taka Tan Shochu, which is flavoured with purple shiso leaves.
A cocktail called Chado is made with rum, metaxa brandy, amaretto, Cointreau, lemon, jasmine tea and clarified milk. A solid selection of zero proof options is available as well.
Cocktails are what you come for but there’s a short wine list as well, featuring little-known B.C. quaffs like an orange petit milo from Salt Spring Island’s Kutatas winery. And for an excellent match with the raw bar, there’s four sakes by the glass or bottle. The menu has a helpful guide to sake terminology, explaining polish ratio and the like.
On Sundays, you’ll encounter live local music that changes up every week.
SIDE DISH
That feeling of ‘I am Canadian’
Experience a legendary Quebec spring ritual in Whistler. Bearfoot Bistro will become a Cabane à Sucre (sugar shack) from April 22 to May 4. Culinary director Dominic Fortin, who is from Quebec’s Charlevoix region, will create a menu inspired by his own memories of the season. His five-course menu, The Magic of Maple, includes choices such as pork and venison cretons, Montreal oreilles de crisse (deep-fried salted fatback), venison and beef tourtière, duck confit cassoulet with sausage and maple pork belly, miso black cod in maple dashi, Alberta elk tenderloin, and maple infused desserts. The dinner, $49, is a collab between Bearfoot Bistro and Maple from Canada. You can reserve a seat
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Source: vancouversun.com