FOOD Guu Davie shines light on Japanese hot pot

SCraig Takeuchi

now drifted down on the opening night of Guu Davie at 1239 Davie Street on February 11. It was appropriate—even auspicious—because this Guu’s menu focuses on nabemono (or nabe), Japanese hot-pot dishes, which have been increasingly appearing on local menus. With Vancouver’s yearlong propensity for wet weather, why not offer respite from the constant cold and dampness?

One type of nabemono available here is shabu-shabu. Similar to other Asian-style hot pots, ingredients are boiled in a broth-filled pot (served atop a heating plate) at the table, and it is less sweet than the better known sukiyaki. Diners can select two broths—ranging from kelp or spicy miso to Japanese curry or pork—served in a stylish bisected pot alongside two dipping sauces. Ingredients include meat, seafood, noodles, vegetables, and assorted wrapped meat rolls (which all range from $12 to $15 per plate).

A locally lesser-known nabemono is oden, a one-pot dish with items simmered in a light dashi (soup stock), often served at food carts or convenience stores in Japan. Here, they’re served cooked and on individual plates, often partly immersed in broth based upon a Kyoto-style recipe with konbu and salt. Vegetable oden options include daikon, taro, and stuffed rice cake, while other classic options include chicken wings, fish cake, half-boiled egg, and more. (A choice of five items is $11.)

With Guu’s progressive bent, a list of unique oden creations (from $5 to $9 per item) fills a menu page with diverse options. There’s everything from a barley-fed-pork cabbage roll

An onion’s flavour can be muted by dashi (soup stock). Photo by Craig Takeuchi

to shiso-herb flavoured deep-fried shrimp, fish, and vegetable cake. Stewed avocado stuffed with crab meat and salmon roe, with béchamel mayonnaise, has a flavour all its own, thanks to the dashi subtly permeating the ingredients. The strong flavour of a whole onion is muted by the broth and the influences of shiitake mushrooms, kelp, and dried anchovies.

For those seeking something other than hot pot, the menu offers many of the chainlet’s izakaya dishes, including yasai (steamed vegetables with tofu and anchovy dipping sauce), ebi taco (battered prawn and ground pork taco), and even Guu’s take on poutine (Japanese beef curry poutine in a hot stone bowl).

Due to heightened interest in Japanese broth-based cuisine, thanks to ramen, will shabu-shabu and oden take off as other facets of Japanese cuisine have in the past? That remains to be seen. Regardless, it’s unarguably fitting for the wintry weather of late. g

Ken Eisner convoluted political history.

The results are based cryptically on the life and work of Gerhard Richter, considered by many to be the greatest living artist. Its sharpest conceit unravels an approach long viewed by art critics as opaque when his visceral autobiography was actually hiding behind generic images—paintings based on photographs, newspaper clippings, and the like.

The Richter character is now called Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling), a shape-shifting personality who excels as a “social-realist” painter in a 1950s GDR. He grew up in Nazi-infested Dresden, where he learned his love of art from an aunt (Saskia Rosendahl) whose budding schizophrenia made her a target for doctors doing a warm-up for the Holocaust by “cleansing” the Reich of defectives.

Later, when the grown Kurt falls in love with a sassy fashion student (Transit’s Paula Beer), she turns out to be the daughter of a highly respected gynecologist (Sebastian Koch).

Bizarrely, the most outrageous of the film’s onslaught of coincidences hew to historical fact, as borne out in Richter’s own heavily encoded art. This attention to detail is weirdly interrupted by Hollywood-style set pieces, comic montages, and repetitive sex scenes, the last courtesy of Paula Beer, whose character is gradually reduced to that of frustrated broodmare. The Third Reich was overly preoccupied with women’s reproductive systems, and so is this movie.

Still, looking away from about 35 minutes of this material will yield an extraordinary visual experience that really does make you think about how you see the world, and the lives of others.