Izakaya Archives - Page 4 of 4

In Four Beakers

G-Be Izakaya: Dragon Ball Z Inspired Sushi

July 18, 2011

The last time I was here, they were still doing a soft opening. After many many many month, they finally fully opened. Since M and I were not super hungry, we decided to grab a few dishes since we were in the area. G-Be Izakaya, as the name suggests it’s an izakaya restaurant serving up Japanese tapas.

The interior was still the same and is very very calming in here. It’s not very noisy compared to places like Guu or Hapa Izakaya. It’s a good place … for the older generation or people who want a quiet place to dine.

The menu has dramatically changed since last time. There are way more choices and includes pictures.

Tea still isn’t free, so you have to pay for it. I got the genmaicha green tea ($1.25). You get refills of your pot so it’s not too too bad.

Ebi Mayo ($7.50) was ok, but not the best I’ve had. I really don’t like how it was drenched in mayo. It really overpowers the delicate taste and texture of the shrimp.

Tori Kara ($6.00) is deep fried chicken covered in a rice crisp. The chicken is incredibly moist as usual. I really did not like the salty seasoning that comes with the dish. It was much better with a miso/sesame sauce like last time.

Salmon and Multi-grain Rice Croquette ($7.00). It’s a deep fried salmon and rice ball with a tonkatsu sauce. It’s actually pretty good and tastes super healthy with the multi-grain rice. Unlike the usual potato croquette, the rice does capture a lot of flavour from the salmon.

Dragon Ball “G” ($12) has eel inside the purple rice, covered in avocado and the signature soy-milk croquette on top. It also has a ceasar sauce on the side too. We really enjoyed this roll because it was named after the popular Japanese anime – Dragon Ball Z.

The sushi itself is not that incredible, but it’s really about the croquette on top. It kinda has a texture like mozzarella inside. The roll is quite expensive for what you get, but at least you can eat this and reminisce about the TV show.

Overall, it was good unique food as usual, but it did cost us a bunch for 2 drinks and 4 dishes. Since it’s located at the Grand Villa Casino, maybe thats why the prices are so high. Made me want to gamble a bit before eating dinner, but I know I always lose.

Words of Wisdom:

Free Parking
Most dishes under $10
Healthy ingredients
Expensive compared to Guu
Unique dishes

We Rate G-Be Izakaya :

Address:

4331 Dominion St
Burnaby, BC

Website:
www.g-beizakaya.ca

In Four Beakers

Guu Kobachi: No Regular Menu, but great concept!

July 16, 2011

@floyvr organized an impromptu EatUp with @wongers, @kcclaveria, @alexglee and @crazyut . Since I am a Guu fanatic, I really really wanted to see their “No Regular Menu” concept. We arrived quite early since the @GuuIzakaya account told us to show up early. Since all openings are not perfect, there were a bit behind on opening at 5:30pm. We just chilled outside till we got in at 6pm.

Guu Kobachi is located at the old Toratatsu near Denman and Robson. They serve up fresh sheets, so the menu will change quite often depending on what ingredients are in season.

The interior is quite small and has the same layout as the old restaurant. It is very simple and wooden. The staff are energetic like the other Guu locations. They don’t have a lot of seating, so going at 7pm with a large group will not be best for you. They won’t be taking reservations till August, but they do have a large table that seats a lot of people if you wanted to have a b-day party dinner here. Just something to note in the future.

This is the setting you will get. They even have the chopstick thing that you see at Chinese restaurant.

Marinated Red Tuna Sashimi ($6.80) was the first dish that arrived at our table and we thought it has the cutest presentation ever! @crazyut enjoyed it and said the tuna had a good flavour and was very fresh.

Marinated Red Tuna Marinated ($6.80) is similar to the one above, but it is marinated to soy sauce or ponzu sauce. We found it was not too bad, but the sauce realy over powered the delicate texture of the tuna.

The first kobashi dish to arrive was the Miso Kakuni ($3.80). It is a slowly stewed pork belly pieces with quail egg in miso and soy sauce soup. This was an amazing dish! The pork belly was very tender and just full of flavour. They are in small pieces, so you will not feel guilty consuming so much fat. ** Must get dish**

Long Green Pepper ($3.80). It is boiled long green pepper marinated in a sweet sesame sauce, topped with bonito flakes. It is like a gomae but with green peppers. The peppers were not spicy at all.

Marinated Eggplant ($3.80). It has rectangular chopped cubes of eggplant with peppers, chili oil and bonito flakes. I liked eggplants, so I liked the pairing of the spicy chili oil and egg plant. I know some people at the table were not keen about eggplant.

Cold Tomato Curry ($3.80). Yes, this is a tomato! I didn’t get a lot of curry taste, it just tasted like a cold salted tomato.

Whole Onion ($3.80). Yes strange right? A whole onion. The onion was stewed in chicken stock and I really enjoyed the taste. Since it has been cooking for a long time, there is no sharp stinging taste.

Vege Chips ($3.80). These are assorted vegetable deep fried. Imagine super healthy chips. There were green peppers, potato skins, lotus roots, and other unidentifiable vegetables. Pretty unique dish and it would go great with beer.

Pork Ginger Spring Roll ($3.80). It has pan-fried pork ginger and cabbage inside. You can really taste the ginger in the pork filling. I didn’t really love this dish, but it was alright.

Chicken Gizzard ($3.80). This is chicken gizzard marinated in cili oil. This is an digestive organ of chickens. I’ve never had gizzard before and it had a very strange texture. When you bite into it, it is tough and hard.

Sweet and sour pork ($3.80). One of THE BEST I have ever had in my life! Very minimal breading so you can really taste the texture of the meat with the amazing sauce. ** Highly recommended**

Rolled Chinese Cabbage ($3.80). It is a stewed meat mixture wrapped in nappa cabbage in a tomatoey fish broth. This was a very unique dish and the meat they used for the dish was pretty good quality.

Marinated Conchi ($3.80). This is the meat from conch shells. It is marinated in garlic soy sauce. We found as we kept chewing on the conch that, it was quite salty. Very interesting to try.

Saba in Curry Sauce ($3.80). This is saba (mackerel) in a a curry sauce with potatoes. The saba tasted really good especially with the combination with the curry.

Beef tenderloin Tataki ($8.90). This is mid-well broiled beef tenderloin tataki style. SO GOOD! THis is the most tender beef I have ever had! ** Highly Recommended**

Kara-age-regular ($6.00). Its a simple japanese deep-fried chicken. It has no bones and comes with a side of mayo for dipping. Meat was very moist and had a light coating.

Squid ink calamari ($6.80) was quite different! It’s purple/black! We found that the deep fried calamari with squid ink just tasted like normal calamari. If you really focus on the taste of it, it has a very subtle taste, but it hard to pick up the flavour.

Ebi Mayo’s sister ($6.00) has ebi mayo coated in shredded potato batter. They add a whole new level to crunchiness! I really liked it since it looks like a sea urchin, but hidden inside is a very tasty piece of shrimp! **highly recommended**

Oyster Chazuke ($6.80). This has seared oyster on rice in fish broth soup. The oyster flavour is quite prominent and infused nicely with the fish broth. If you are an oyster lover, you will enjoy this dish.

Sockeye Salmon Carpaccio ($6.80). Was very good!! You can really taste the freshness of their salmon and their light sauces allow for the fresh taste to really since throught! ** highly recommended**

This came near the end of our meal. I think the chef gave it to us because we waiting outside for them to open. I think this was the Assorted Vege Salad ($4.80). It has long strands of carrots, radish, bonito flakes, greens in a ponzu sauce (i think). The stands of the radish were very very long!! It’s like those times when you are trying to split a bowl of noodles but it’s difficult because its just so long.

This isn’t a regular salad. It still has a good refreshing taste and it’s quite large.

Sapporo (Pint-$5.50). This is definitely needed every time you go to Guu!

Overall, we all had a great time and then menu items are quite unique compared to the other Guu chains. Since it just opened, they do have a few issues such as leaky pipes and missing orders. Do give the waitress patience as well since their english is not very good. They are trying their best, but none of us got mad or anything. Do check your bill before you pay because sometimes they might get an order wrong or something hasn’t arrived yet.

I am sure in a few weeks they will improve on a few of their flaws. For an opening day, it went pretty well and the place was packed. We racked up quite a bill of $130, but we did order a lot! It was well worth it.

Words of Wisdom:

Recommended: Miso Kakuni, Sweet + Sour Pork, Beef tenderloin Tataki, Ebi Mayo Sister, and Sockeye Salmon Carpaccio
Well priced items
Good atmosphere
Free parking after 6 at rear ( best not to drive, very limited parking)
Best to get off Burrard and take the bus down Robson
Super busy at peak hours

We Rate Guu Kobashi:

Address:

735 Denman Street
Vancouver, BC

Website:
www.guu-izakaya.com/kobachi/

Twitter: @GuuIzakaya

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KitanoyaGuuIzakayaOfficial

Vancouver

In Four Beakers

Guu with Garlic: Great Place to Eat + Drink

July 5, 2011

KoreanGirl and I just finished our intersession course at SFU, so we decided to meet up Mandu and head over to Guu with Garlic. We had a great girls night at Guu Garden last time, so we headed to my other favorite Guu – Guu with Garlic.

This Guu is cool because it has the usual dining area, a patio and also a Japanese style upper area. Since it was a very busy day, we were put in the Japanese style area. It was super cool but I had the hardest time sitting down. My pants proved to be a bit problematic as well as the part where my legs kept getting numb. I totally prefer real chairs.

They have a regular menu and a fresh sheet.

We started off with a pitcher of Asahi ($21). It’s something that KoreanGirl and I must have! Japanese beer is the perfect thing to order when you are going to dig into a lot of izakaya dishes. What we noticed about this pitcher was how bad the pour job was… there was way too much head.

Mandu decided she didn’t want to pack on the pounds so she got a large bottle of cold sake ($7.80) and a diet coke ($2). She just mixed those two slowly together throughout the night.

Mandu loves her Saba Grill ($7.80). I was a bit skeptical about it since last time but I am really starting to like the dish. The Saba meat is flaky and goes perfectly with the garlic chips and lemon. It is grilled very nicely and the soy sauce works hand in hand with the garlic chip taste.

No meal can be done without Ebi Mayo ($7.80) at Guu. It comes with 6 pieces in a chili mayo dip. It’s still not the best Ebi Mayo I have ever had, but it’s not too bad.

I actually love enjoy eating the crunchy tail! A lot of people find it weird and just leave the shell, but it is edible if it is fried.

I am a huge fan of Sashimi salad ($6.80). The salad is mixed greens with a plum dressing and wasabi mayo. The sashimi was part of this dish was prawns, and some other types of fish that I couldn’t identify. It was pretty good and was a nice refreshing dish that did not have a heavy taste. The wasabi mayo adds a little kick to the dish as well!

By now, the Assorted oden ($6.50) is a must have! You can choose six items in it and we chose daikon, deep fried tofu, mocha tofu bag, puffed fish cake, beef tendon and fish cake.

The broth is very amazing and light. The addition of the yellow type of wasabi added a lot of strong sharp spicy taste to it. We accidentally added it into the broth and it was SO good!

The Maguro steak ($8.50) is a slab of ahi tuna sashimi steak marinated in garlic, soy sauce and sake. We felt that it was really just a slab of ahi tuna, which needed more flavor. We thought there would be a more unique taste, but it wasn’t there.

2 kinds of chicken cartilage ($5.50) was something quite interesting and very different! They batter and deep-fry the different parts of cartilage from the chicken. The have lemon and salt + pepper to add for more taste. Clearly, they don’t waste any parts of the chicken.

From the fresh sheet, we got the Curry croquette ($4.00). Golden brown and crispy on the outside, but the inside was just very smooth and had a good balance of curry taste.

We then ventured into trying the Gyu Tan/Beef tongue ($4.80). This is grilled beef tongue with an awesome salt green onion mixture. The beef tongue was tender and was seasoned very nicely and the onion mixture accompanied it well.

The Yaki Udon ($7.80) is something more standard. It I span fried udon, beef, mushrooms, green onion, and then seasoned with soy sauce and butter.

It was all right, but nothing special.

The Okonomiyaki ($5.80) is a deep fried squid & cabbage pancake with tonkatsu sauce and a mustard mayo sauce. I thought this was all right and kinda reminded me of the Korean seafood pancake but smaller and with more sauce.

I love Ramune ($2.50). It is just a Japanese soda, which has a marble, as it’s “lid”.

At this point of the night, we need more beer, so we ordered a Mega Sapporo ($9.00). It’s a huge glass and it has about a liter.

We then had the Ochazuke ($4.30). It’s rice in a dashi broth with tuna. It was light and subtle and ended the meal very nicely.

Lastly, we had the Tako Wasa ($3.50). It is marinated octopus and wasabi sauce with seaweed. You take the seaweed and put some taco wasa onto the seaweed, roll it up and eat.

I liked it because of the sharp wasabi sting.

Overall, we all had a great time! We ordered way too much and drank too much. Eventually we racked up the bill and it came to $150 after tips. I like the atmosphere and it’s a good place to unwind at the end of the day.

Words of Wisdom: