SUSHI STILL SUPER
Revamped restaurant still hits the spot
Why fix something that’s not broken? Zest Japanese restaurant had been an award-winner (four golds for Vancouver Magazine’s Best Japanese) when it closed to renovate and rebrand last June.
It resurfaced at September’s end, refreshed — newly upholstered bench seats, grey green walls turned to taupe and a few other things — under the new name Yuwa and with a new chef, Masahiro Omori. The reason for the change was, longtime chef and partner Tatsuya Katagiri left to open his own restaurant in Burnaby after eight and a half years as chef and partner at Zest.
“We’re happy for him. It’s his dream and we’re cheering for him,” says Iori Kataoka, owner of Zest and Shuraku restaurants. Katagiri’s new Burnaby restaurant will be called Stem and word is, chef Yoshiaki Maniwa, who tended the sushi bar at Zest, might be joining him.
Yuma’s Omori is actually an “old” new chef. He’d previously been chef at Shuraku, a downtown izakaya-style restaurant, but had returned to Japan until recently. He now co-owns Yuwa with Kataoka.
Yuwa is named for Omori’s grandmother, who ran a fish market in Ciba and set him on the road to a culinary life. She recently died at the age of 96 so the name’s in her memory but also, as a talisman for restaurant longevity.
I’d always appreciated the calm Zen oasis at Zest, an escape from life’s endless clamouring; Yuwa has that same calm. The attention getters are dramatic displays of white orchids. Quiet jazz softens restaurant bustle.
The menu allows, if you wish, a kaiseki-style meal, progressing from small tapas bites to deepfried, to simmered, grilled, then noodles or rice. And somewhere in there, you’d throw back some sashimi and sushi.
Omori has taken charge of the kitchen and hot foods and Yusuke Natatani, who once was a tuna distributor at Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji Fish Market, presides over the sushi station.
“I had a personal tour of the tuna alleys by one of his colleagues,” says Kataoka. “There are three or four alleys of tuna shops and quality depends on the alley.”
The sushi and sashimi are very good; you can see the glistening freshness. I like to test the seafood with uni (sea urchin) because they’re finicky rascals and are the first to go into a pout once harvested. Plus, I like them. I ordered uni ($7.50), B.C. freshwater eel ($4.50) and jackfish nigiri ($5.80); he crafted them beautifully and signalled high-quality seafood.
In the hot kitchen, Omari offers variety and some surprises. He delves deeper into Japanese cuisine than most other Japanese chefs or he’ll play creatively. According to Kataoka, on his days off, he scours markets looking for unique ingredients and inspiration, which is why I found a little calamansi half instead of lemon for a hit of citrus on one dish.
I can’t say the cooked dishes were great across the board, but there definitely were delicious moments. Dungeness crab and hakusai nibitashi (crab and stewed nappa or sui choi, $10) was one such dish. Baby sui choi, shimeji mushrooms, tofu were simmered in a dashi broth. Crab and salmon
roe crowned the dish. Another dish, sablefish, marinated for 24 hours in a yuzu shoyu sauce and then grilled, came with kale, carrot and burdock kinpira, apple compote and wine sauce. It offered a lovely balance of umami, salty, sweet and sour.
Vegetable kakiage tendon (a vegetable fritter over rice, $12) would be considered the last course in a multi-course kaiseki dinner, Kataoka says.
It’s referred to as a tempura fritter, but do not think tempura because you’ll be displeased — it’s rougher, lacking the feminine delicacy of tempura. Think fritter and you’ll be happy with the comfort feel of the dish.
A ling cod and ebi yuba tsutsumi age (fishcake rolled in nori, thin layer of mozzarella, and tofu skin, then deep-fried, $15) is a labour-intensive dish, but the fish cake was dense and chewy. On the side, chef made some ebi shio, or salt with ground dried prawn shell. This was the plate where he ditched lemon for calamansi.
Beef suji nikomi (beef tendons and daikon stewed 48 hours in shoyu stock, $13) arrived in a hot cast-iron bowl. I promptly burnt a finger and my husband advised that I should be like Hunter S. Thompson and bring a fire extinguisher to restaurants. Agreed, especially upon remembering that I once lit an oversized menu on fire with a candle. The beef was another homestyle dish; the broth was tasty and the meat tender, but if it weren’t for the green onions on top it would have been an offputting study in beige.
For dessert, I liked the sake brule with sake kasu (lees) with a delicate wisp of brule more than the matcha cheesecake, which was too dense for my liking.
The drinks list has some beers (some local, some Japanese) and the wine listing has tripled with the restaurant resurrection. Kataoka, a certified sake sommelier, is proud of the sake list.
“We have sakes from all the regions, some with hard water, some with soft,” she says, and encourages pairing them with food. “Interest in this is growing.”
Once every month or two, the restaurant does a sake or wine dinner. The last one, on Nov. 21, sold out in three days.