Gaya Sushi: New Japanese Restaurant in North Burnaby

To ring in the New Year, how about doing a review on a newly opened restaurant? Gaya Sushi just opened up on Christmas Eve on Lougheed and Brainbridge. I live super close to this place, so I’ve been stalking to see when they open. I’m always a sucker for Japanese food, so I really wanted to see if it was any good.

Walking inside, I was surprised! It looked nice! Way better than any of the other restaurants in the area.

Spicy Tuna ($8.50) was on par with other restaurants that serve this. The tuna chunks were nice and thick with the typical korean hot sauce. It also has cucumbers.

Chilly Ebi ($5.95) has deep fried prawns with chilli sauce. This was alright, but wasn’t the best I’ve had. I think they could of had better batter.

Soft Shelled Crab ($6.95) is lightly breaded deep fried soft shelled crab with tonkatsu sauce on top. This was really good and tasted much better than the Chilly Ebi. I would definitely order this again.

Tako Salad came to our table as a mistake. It has a lot of pieces of octopus slices up on top of ponzu sauce and greens. They just gave it to us complementary and it tasted alright. If you like octopus, you’d probably like it.

Fire Cracker Roll ($4.99) has scallops, avocados, smoked salmon and spicy tuna on top. It was alright, but it wasn’t the best specialty roll I’ve had.

Philadelphia Roll ($4.50) has cream cheese, asparagus, avocado, cucumber and smoked salmon on top. The roll was also alright, but the texture of the asparagus didn’t blend too well with the roll.

Osaka Combo ($7.95) has dynamite roll, 1 pieces of salmon nigiri, 1 tuna nigiri and ebi nigiri. BusanGirl liked it and thought it was a good deal since it did some with a large roll and nigiri.

Tuna Tataki Salad came from the chef since I assume he was trying to experiment with new dishes.

The bottom has a tartar of chopped up tuna thats scorched on the exterior and topped with greens and daikon. On the bottom is a sweet type of ponzu sauce. It was also alright, but I didn’t take a liking to the sweet ponzu sauce. On the other hand, BusanGirl quite liked it.

Overall, the dishes are all quite affordable and have lots of choices. Their sushi needs a little bit of work, but should get a better overtime. It’s a good addition to the neighbourhood.

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