this post is filed under Cuisine - Japanese, Location - Vancouver

Finally, my last set of pictures from Vancouver. This is a late night meal at Hapa Izakaya, a Japanese place on Robson.

ebi mayo - deep fried shrimp

aburi shime saba - fresh mackerel seared at your table

negitoro with garlic toast

kakuni - slow simmered chinese pork with steamed buns

ishi-yaki - rice, pork, garlic, egg, tomato, and miso cooked at the table in a korean hot stone bowl

This was sort of my second dinner, so I wasn't that hungry, but this stuff was good. The shrimp was a little standard... nothing special. I'm not usually a big fan of saba but Geoff likes it and he said this was good. It was cool watching them sear it, and it tasted good too. Still raw for the most part but smoky on the outside and less of the fishiness that usually comes with saba. The negitoro was more like a tuna tartare type of thing than a traditional negitoro, but good anyway. We ordered the kakuni out of curiousity, half expecting cha siu bao. This turned out to be really delicious, but the piece of pork was probably the fattiest/oiliest/greasiest thing I've eaten in a long time. Weak eaters be warned. The ishi-yaki was really good too - the egg is raw when they bring it to you and everything cooks in the stone pot, basically like a bibimbap (the picture is taken after everything's been mixed up). By then we were too full and could only finish half of it.

The restaurant looks really cool and hip inside. Izakaya apparently translates roughly to "bistro" and serves a bunch of shared smallish dishes as well as lots of drinks. Great deal too... each dish was only about $7 Canadian.

This place sucked.
The owner, a white guy made sure he let me know about 7 times that he was the owner.
It soured the meal and made me want to get the hell out of there.

i would NOT recommend this place to anyone.

posted by Fred on February 10, 2005 11:31 AM

Great place to take a guest -- a unique dining experience above and beyond the typical "california roll" scene. Great ambience, an energetic room, friendly service, a passionate proprietor, and above all, great food. Sharing dishes is the way to go, along with a bottle or two of Kirin--remember to super size it!

posted by Rudy Chung on May 10, 2005 07:25 PM