I am always excited about coming back to Vancouver because I get to have my fill of sushi. To say that sushi in Toronto is terrible is to make an understatement: though I am now willing to (grudgingly) concede that Toronto does have its myriad strengths as a city, I still think that its sushi selection in comparison to Vancouver is rather dismal. Toronto is good for 'non-sushi sushi', i.e., sushi for the California roll connoseuir. Thus, while I can happily imbibe copious amounts of 'sushi pizza' courtesy of New Generation Sushi at the Annex, I recognize that this isn't the real deal. My bi-annual trips back to Vancouver entails massive OD-ing on sushi. Hence, my friends know better than to ask me where I want to eat whenever we make lunch or dinner plans - it's nothing else but Japanese food for me, thankyouverymuch. After all, I need to eat as much sushi as possible to accommodate months of sushi withdrawal in Toronto.
Fortunately, my last visit to Vancouver was longer than usual. In contrast to past summers, which consisted of me zipping away to work in exciting locales, I have nothing else to do this year except to present papers at conferences and to do massive amounts of reading for my godforsaken degree. As such, I used my free schedule as an opportunity to spend 5 weeks in BC, giving me ample time to revisit old sushi haunts. Alas, I soon learned that returning to places I used to love may be followed by an inevitable sense of disappointment. In these instances, either the memory of long-gone meals has led to a romanticized recollection of not-so-perfect dishes or the food quality has invariably deteriorated.
This observation rung especially true during my visit to The Eatery on West Broadway. As an undergraduate, Epicurean Adventurer was the Eatery's biggest superfan: I was there thrice a week, and even had several of my pictures taped on their wall of patrons. The Eatery was the place where I dragged my roommates whenever we were too lazy to cook, and was the site of many a debauched evening. Back then, I not only appreciated its proximity to campus, but also enjoyed its assortment of eclectic Asian fusion sushi. Moreover, its funky decour consisting of ubiquitous Astro Boy images, Andy Warhol inspired prints and cute emblems like "miso horny" appealed to my puerile twenty year old self. (As an aside, I never did take potential boyfriends to the Eatery - perhaps looking at the 'miso horny' signeage was too obvious, even back in the days when disclosures of attraction over MSN was seen as the height of romance).
I decided to return to the Eatery with MAF, fellow Eatery patron, ex-flatmate, and all-around impressive person. Although I have obviously been back to Vancouver since leaving the parental homestead in 2003, I curiously never had the chance to return to my favorite restaurant circa 2000-2002. Initially, all seemed well. Although the restaurant expanded in size and now encompassed two rooms, it was still the same dark, dingy place with a retro-cool sensibility. Candles were wedged into root beer bottles on top of wooden tables, funky prints adorned the walls, and loud rock music blasted through the speakers. The menu, though different, still had some of the same items - there was still a selection of standard don buri bowls and Japanese curry samples, and the Andy Warhol (mango, tuna, salmon and mayo) and Sweet Little Suji (asparagus, tempura prawns, and aggae) rolls were still available.
That said, I found new additions to the menu slightly off-putting because I was skeptical of their culinary merit. For instance, while the Bagel (cream cheese, smoked salmon, tomato, green onion, cucumber, avocado) and the Charlie rolls (avocado and tempura tuna) seemed like legitimate additions, I seriously doubted whether the KFC (chicken cutlet, avocado, mayo) and tex mex (california roll with a salsa of tomatoes, avocado, roe and salmon) rolls had anything else going for them except for their trendy monickers. In fact, browsing through the menu showed that the Eatery's copy writers are working double time. The name assigned to the roll and its accompanying descriptions clearly showed a lot of effort on the part of the copy writers to make tired-sounding ingredients sound fresh and funky.
These apprehensions aside, MAF and I proceeded to order. We had the sweet little suji, tuna crunch (tuna, tempura bits, mayo) and viva las vegas (crab, eel, avocado, cream cheese, and spicy mayo) rolls, as well as the pork gyoza okonomiyaki. While we waited, we observed that the servers were likely hired because they embodied the management's understanding of how 'funky' is personified - skimpy black lycra, midriff baring tops, multiple piercings and heavy kohl eyeliner was the norm. After waiting for half an hour, during which no one asked us whether we needed more water or more tea, our food finally arrived without much panache. MAF and I eagerly dug in and were...disappointed. The okonomiyaki was 50% smaller than I remembered it being. Back then, it was served sizzling hot, with okonomiyaki sauce and mayo liberally sprinkled on top. The okonomiyaki in front of me was cut into five pizza-like slices, was cold, and had the consistency of rubber. The sushi, meanwhile, was average. While the tuna crunch and sweet little suji were acceptable, the viva las vegas roll did not live up to its promise of gargantuan proportions. The menu described this roll as having killed Elvis because of its decadence, but I suspect Elvis - had he eaten this roll - would have instead died out of boredom.
The lesson I learned from my meal that evening was that maybe some memories are better left in the past. According to the Eatery, good sushi comes with a huge dollop of mayo and an even bigger dollop of forced funkiness, which might have been good when I was 19, but not nearly good enough years later. As someone in her mid-twenties, I would rather eschew coolness in favor of quality; seeing that the Eatery has too much of the former and hardly any of the latter, I can safely say that the love affair is over.
All was not lost during my explorations of former sushi haunts, however. Following my disastruous sushi encounter at the Eatery, my family and I headed to Ebisu, a Japanese restaurant in Richmond (with another branch in Vancouver) that used to be known as Daimaru sushi but has undergone two or three restaurant and menu makeovers since 2002. As a result, my trips back to the restaurant were never the same; it seemed as though every time I returned, the restaurant has once again made improvements. In so doing, of course, it allowed itself to evolve and to fall in line with its clientele's changing tastes; thus, it has survived in Vancouver's notoriously fickle restaurant industry, where Japanese restaurants are a dime a dozen.
Indeed, comparing and contrasting Daimaru and Ebisu shows that Ebisu is far superior. Whereas Daimaru sushi used to be a standard, slightly dumpy, but still fantastic all-you-can-eat restaurant, its incarnation into the sophisticated Ebisu barely showed any traces of its pedestrian past; Ebisu, unlike Daimaru, bills itself as a tapa-style restaurant, with nary a bento box special in sight. Ebisu's interiors are cool and chic, with an impressive sushi bar occupying the middle of the room, modern wood panelling, and spacious tables. Interestingly, some of its former serving staff still remained, including two sushi chefs whose creations were always dependably solid. Our server knew us from when my brother was still in grade school; in turn, my family knew her before she got married and had children. Consequently, eating at Ebisu was quite comforting: it still retained enough of the same attributes to be recognizable but had instituted enough changes that one felt that the restaurant was always trying to evolve for the better.
Due to its attempts at self-improvement, Ebisu's menu has genuinely unique items that, unlike the Eatery, were obviously included not to fulfill some bizarre 'trendy' criteria but to showcase the strengths of its sushi chefs. The tapas-style menu allowed us to try different dishes without being restricted by size or, indeed, by price. We started with the excellent sashimi salad, which had thin slivers of salmon sashimi atop spinach and grated carrots and sprinkled with hot sauce. We then had oyster motoyaki, which was served in a hot white bowl with a slice of bread and had generous chunks of oyster and green onion; though I did not think the bread added anything new to the dish, I was impressed with the creamy richness of the sauce. Bear in mind that oyster motoyaki is very easily ruined by its sauce; other restaurants serve oyster motoyaki as being either too salty or too bland, and Ebisu's oyster motoyaki was neither. The prawn-and-cream cheese gyoza followed, which I enjoyed because the gyoza wrapper lightly skimmed the prawn and cheese interior, making each dumpling light and delicate. Following this, we had the fantastic roll, which consisted of avocado, cream cheese, salmon, and papaya, and the crunch n' munch roll, with eel, avocado and prawn tempura. Both were good, and my brother and I ended up having a chopsticks duel over the last remaining roll. The highlight of our meal, nevertheless, was the toro sashimi. Toro, which can be found in the fattiest part of the tuna, is the big daddy of sashimi - tuna and salmon sashimi may do when one is on a budget, but if one wants good sashimi, toro almost always hits the spot. Ebisu's selection of toro was particulary noteworthy because it is obvious that their tuna was especially fresh. All in all, I was exceedingly satisfied.
Crunch n Munch Roll
Salmon sashimi salad
I still do not know whether the Eatery was this mediocre a few years ago, or whether it has simply gone downhill. Quite frankly, I don't really want to make a return visit to see which is which. Ebisu, thankfully, has remained consistently fantastic by taking risks and adapting to the trends of the market. I eagerly look forward to my return to Ebisu months from now, for surely, new innovations will have once again been included in the menu.
