Three casual Japanese restaurants add vitality to one Vancouver block
New Fuji
1815 West First Ave., Vancouver |
Toyokan Plaza
Ground floor,1898 West First Ave., Vancouver |
Toyokan Bowl
1898 West First Ave., (second floor), Vancouver |
Like most siblings, this popular trio of Japanese restaurants on the 1800 block of West First Ave., have their differences, but thanks to their savvy owner, there’s coherence.
New Fuji, Toyokan Plaza and Toyokan Bowl nail it with fun, affordable food. They’re run by Minoru Tamaru under the umbrella of his Tamaru Shoten Marketing Corporation. Tamaru’s founded some of the most successful and imaginative izakayas in town, beginning with Kingyo back in the early 2000s. Others quickly followed — Raisu, Rajio, and Suika. The latter closed almost two years ago when a fire broke out next door.
Tamaru travels a lot, and his souvenirs are food ideas. “He loves to try new foods, experience new cultures,” says Tamaru Shoten’s general manager Masayoshi Dandoko. “He’s always overseas, trying new things.”
The food is tweaked Japanese or a Japanese interpretation of other cuisines. You’ll find pizzas at Toyokan Plaza but they speak Japanese. The unagi nori pizza, for example, would elicit a hard no from a nonna. Unagi sauce, eel cubes, Gorgonzola, mozzarella, sunny-side up egg? “Assolutamente no!” she’d gasp.
“He always says we are Japanese,” Dandoka says. “Pizzas are Italian and we cannot win, so we’ll make pizzas with our own ideas.” Think Japadog’s adoption of American hotdogs.
Of the First Avenue restaurants, New Fuji is the cool kid with a luminescent aquamarine grid behind the bar, the spaces filled with bottles of spirits and Japanese pop iconography.
At this bustling spot, you could have a quickie bowl of udon, a plate of yaki udon or a fluffy omelette with unagi, and be done. Comforting udon is the big seller here. Or, you could mix it up with pressed sushi or chirashi, truffle corn karaage, or truffle edamame “flambéed with red wine for aroma.” During the day, there’s a bento-style lunch ‘gozen’ with sushi, udon, salad, a deep-fried dish, and your choice of main.
We romped around the menu. Chicken dashi karaage ($14 for five pieces), marinated in a dashi soy was nicely juicy and wore a delicately crisp batter. Bluefin tuna negitoro ($18), pressed rectangular sushi, was topped with a mixture of tuna, rice cracker bits, onions, and apple, layered with shiso and kombu and drizzled with shiso chimichurri, scallion ginger sauce and sweet soy. A lot, yes, but it was tidy and precise.
Spicy wagyu miso egg udon ($23) threatens fire and brimstone with its flaming orange sauce but it’s umami forward with wagyu beef and beaten eggs thickening the soup. I played catch and release with the slippery noodles but managed to wrangle them into submission. Snow crab and mentaiko (spicy cod roe) peperoncino yaki udon ($24) was lovely. Yaki implies fried or grilled but this dish is gentle, like a pasta alfredo. It’s topped with snow crab, shredded seaweed and arugula.
New Fuji tantalizes with desserts. When I visited some time ago, it was ‘parfait week’ and most diners succumbed to the pretty presentations, and so did we, eyes widening at the the hojicha, fig, and strawberry parfait with pistachio mascarpone cream and softly chewy mochi balls on top. Most recently, dessert week was all about Japanese-style fruit tarts.
Down the street at Toyokan Plaza and the upstairs Toyokan Bowl, the physically challenged kitchens guide the menu. Actually, upstairs, there is no kitchen, so the focus is on fresh sashimi bowls with mostly local seafood, except for the uni, bluefin tuna and yellowtail.
I have yet to visit the upstairs but downstairs at Toyokan Plaza, it was small kitchen be damned. The menu is ambitious. Udon pastas in Japanese disguise include goma miso wagyu Bolognese; a squid-butter vongole with squid liver cream; and miso-cream king salmon udon. As well, there’s a selection of aged seafood, ‘long sushi’, veggies, dumplings, steamed dishes, and interestingly, ‘oyster tea’ (by steeping oysters in hot dashi and sake in a teapot).
The must-have dish is the grilled spice chicken leg ($17), juicy on the inside, and a crunchy mahogany skin outside. It’s marinated and aged overnight before roasting with a “secret sauce.” The sauce mixes with raw cabbage on the plate. The dish, honetsuki-dori, from Kagawa prefecture, means bone-in chicken and bones always lend extra flavour to meat.
Sea urchin udon ($34) is creamy and rich and topped with nobs of fresh uni. Uni cream four cheese pizza ($32) is topped with mascarpone uni sauce, lotus root, seaweed, mozzarella, Gorgonzola, Grana Padano, and fresh uni on each of the eight slices.
I liked a deconstructed shumai dumpling ($15), where flat noodles sandwich beef, pork and dried scallop filling, but it wasn’t a big seller and it’s now off the menu. “It’s popular in Japan and China,” Dandoka says.
Cocktails at New Fuji are more fun than finesse. Served in steins, they’re flavoured with homemade syrups including Okinawan craft cola, a healthier, spicy alternative to mass-produced cola. Otherwise, there are Japanese beers, a very inexpensive wine list, sake, plum wine and shochu. There’s more fun to be had in the Toyokan Plaza drinks list. Try a frozen gin sour flavoured with lemon, orange, kiwi, kumquat or grapefruit and packed with sliced fruit. You can also sample sangria, sake and bottled Japanese beer.
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SIDE DISHES
If you’re already pondering a summer getaway, there’s another good reason to consider a visit to the Sunshine Coast. Jack Chen has just been named the inaugural head chef of a new restaurant, The Breeze, located on the Sechelt waterfront.
Chen is a familiar name to Vancouver diners. He was mentored by the likes of Scott and Stephanie Jaeger of Pear Tree and John Bishop of Bishop’s. He went on to lead culinary teams at L’Abattoir and Farmer’s Apprentice, among others. After relocating to the Sunshine Coast, Chen and his wife, pastry chef Hilary Prince, opened Brassica restaurant in Gibsons. Beloved by locals and visitors alike, it unfortunately closed after a short run.
The Breeze restaurant, set to open in May, will be located at Telus Marina in Sechelt, a brand-new venue that also offers accommodations, an event space, and a rooftop patio.
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Source: vancouversun.com