June 9, 2011, Saturday – cloudy
After our crazy shopping in Burnaby at the clearance centre of Sugoi, me and K were off to look for a lunch place near by. I asked K and she felt like having some Japanese food. She suggested to try out Sushimoto near her home. I did some browsing on Urban Spoon and found a few good reviews on it. So we parked near by and walked over to this little Japanese restaurant next to the Holdom Skytrain station.
It’s actually a pretty cute restaurant with the sushi bar decorated with model kits and posters. As usual, I forgot to take any picture of the outside or inside of the restaurant.
We spotted the Sushimoto Lunch Chirashi Don on the menu for less than $10 so we both decided to get it.
The lunch set came with a bowl of miso soup which was tasty but not salty. That’s a good sign of a Japanese restaurant. The soup bowl looked small but it’s actually a decent size.
Next, the waitress brought over a House Salad for us to share. It’s actually not listed on the menu as part of the Chirashi don set but she said it’s on the house. From reading the reviews, I think they like to give out complementary salad from time to time. 🙂 The vegetables were very fresh and it had some dry cranberries, shaved almonds and croutons. The dressing was a oriental style vinaigrette. We were both happy with the refreshing salad.
The Chirashi was good. It had slices of house made tamago, salmon, tuna, hokkigai (surf clam), tai (red snapper), ebi (cooked shrimp) and masago. This was a creative sashimi don with unagi sauce on the sushi rice. The sauce was a bit too much for my liking. The fish was fresh and I liked the way they were cut (not too thick nor too thin). The sushi rice was warm, fresh, soft and slightly sticky. It was seasoned right and I would ask them to go light on the sauce next time when I order this again. They also used natural colour pickled ginger.
The food tasted authentic but the owner/chef could be Japanese or Korean. The restaurant felt very energetic and had a young vibe to it. It could be a great place for a drink or beer with sushi and Japanese tapas. Since it’s next to the Skytrain station, you don’t need to worry about driving there at all.
A Hungry Bear 