Hapa Izakaya in Kitsilano is a great late night place to go for tapas. M, FragileBoy, InsecureGirl and I wanted something light and not too heavy to end the day. After contemplating many choices, we chose Hapa on Kits!
The interior is really intimate with candles and it’s dark appearance. As the rumour goes, yes, Hapa has some pretty girl servers. To think about it…I don’t think I saw any waiters…only waitresses. Imagine going on a date and the guy keeps staring at the waitresses…that wouldn’t be cool.
There were a lot of menu’s on our table. I guess they have a lot of specials and seasonal dishes.
When asked what we wanted to start off with, we asked if they had Asahi Black ($6.50). Indeed they did! So we ordered 4.
We started off with Beef Tataki ($7.95). This was a bit different that what I usually imagine. It had hot sauce on it instead of the usual ponzu sauce. I didn’t particularly like this dish. If you are into hot sauce, you may enjoy this dish.
We next had the Negitoro ($7.95). It is blended toro and onion. It also has i think either ponzu sauce or soy sauce. You would first mix up the ingredients so you get an even coating of sauce when you divide up the dish. This was soooo good! We have to order 2 places cause we all wanted more!
Spicy Scallop Roll ($7.95) was just average. Nothing exceptional about this roll. I could have been more spicy. Inside the roll there was spicy scallops and cucumber. If you call it “spicy”, you gotta make it SPICY!
Next we had the Salmon Risotto croquette ($6.95). It had 5 balls and they contained shitake mushrooms, salmon+ Dashi Risotto and drizzled with mayo. This as surprisingly filling. The risotto didn’t taste like risotto since it was in a different form.
The Wild Prawn Ebi Mayo ($8.95). Tempura prawns with spicy mayo sauce. The prawns were a bit small for my liking. I still believe you can’t beat the ebi mayo at Toratatsu and Guu.
Smoked Gindara ($11.00) smoked sable fish. The sable fish was perfectly done! It was nice, moist and the skin was nice and crunchy.
King Crab Roll ($11.95) I thought was expensive and overrated. You can’t really taste the full flavour of the king crab with all the other ingredients in the way.
We also got the Sashi Mori ($19.95) which is basically assorted sushi. It had 4 pieces of scallops, salmon, tuna, and some other type of fish. The quality was pretty good, but for that price, it was so not worth it.
The damage on the bill was $138.38 for 4 people. Ouch.
Overall, I was satisfied with Hapa Izakaya.
Words of Wisdom:
- Negitoro!
We rate Hapa Izakaya: 
Check out their website: www.hapaizakaya.com
