Sushi In Kitsilano
On Friday night Lou and I went with some friends to a restaurant in Kitsilano where we tried sushi for the first time. Lou met me at the office after work and we all headed over shortly after 5pm. Kitsilano is a neighbourhood in the west of the city south of downtown just over the other side of the Granville Bridge. The place has a reputation for being a predominantly young, vibrant and trendy area home to young businessmen and hipsters. Looking out of the windows of car it sure gave that impression even on a rainy evening, there are lots of people around and plenty of shops, bars and restaurants.
Sushi as I'm sure I've mentioned before is very popular out here and it's probably down to the fact we are right next to the sea and we have a large population of people from (or descendants from) the orient. In a way I guess it's a little bit surprising to other people that we hadn't tried it ourselves until that night, there are literally sushi places on every other street and you'll never have to go to far to find a place. The truth is neither of us are really big seafood fans (like many people brought up in the Midlands of the UK!) and the idea of eating fish raw wasn't overly appealing to us. Since I started work I've noticed a lot of my friends there eat it for their lunch but I was never confident enough to try it myself. There has even been a bit of a running joke in the office about it - whenever I was offered sushi people would know I'd turn my nose up at it and be grossed out by it! However, part of the excitement of us living here is that we get to try new things and we certainly wasn't going to turn down an opportunity to try it once we received an invitation to join some sushi eating professionals!
The restaurant we went to was called Shabusen Yakiniku House and it's a joint sushi and Korean BBQ place. There were seven of us in total and it was buffet style place. We simply filled out ordering cards of what we wanted, specified the quantity then waited for it to be delivered. When it arrived it all came on separate dishes and we just helped ourselves to whatever we wanted. It was an ideal setting for us to try out things for the first time. We knew if we didn't like something it wouldn't go to waste as their were plenty of people who would finish it instead so that gave us the flexibility to try out many things. As me and Lou were clueless we left the ordering down to everybody else because they knew exactly what to get! Even though I wasn't feeling too keen on some of the dishes I forced myself to try it all, and although I can't say it was all delicious there wasn't a single thing that was disgusting - just unusual.
By the end of the meal I had tried Nigiri-sushi (slices of fish or other items on pads of rice), both vegetarian and meat based Maki-sushi (rolled sushi) and Sashimi (sliced raw fish on it's own). I also tried some tempura (battered carrot and yam), cooked mussels and spicy squid. I think some people were surprised I was trying so many things but I probably looked braver than I felt - some things took a lot of courage! My biggest fear was that some things were going to taste extremely strong and smell horrible but everything was super fresh, it didn't smell unpleasant at all and none of it was too strong. None of the raw tuna or raw salmon tasted like it does when it's cooked and it was very tender and soft. The texture is unusual and it's very strange when you first put it in your mouth and chew, it's almost same texture as a soft gummy sweet.
The squid probably looked like the most adventurous thing out of everything I tried as it was the full body of one with tentacles and everything but it was actually relatively tasteless. The sashimi was probably the hardest thing to eat and it took a lot of mental power to psyche myself up for it! I put too much in my mouth and it took a lot of chewing and the longer it took me to eat the more it played on my mind and started to put me off. I still forced myself to finish eating it though and I think I gained respect from the lads for going through with it haha!
Lou wasn't as adventurous and she mainly stuck to the vegetable based things, however right at the end she was feeling inspired too and she was brave enough to try the salmon sashimi even before me! As well as the Sushi we also tried out some Korean BBQ food. We'd heard of Korean BBQ before but we didn't know exactly what it was until Friday, it's basically a BBQ built in to the table and the waiters bring you raw meat and you simply cook it yourself - it's really good! We had some spicy pork and beef and it was fun cooking it ourselves at the table.
We spent about an hour and half at the restaurant and by the time we left I think we were all very full. It was a good experience overall, but I think it will still take a while to get used to eating it regularly. Everyone we were with assured us that once the unusualness goes away and we become familiar with it we'll then start to enjoy it more and we'll eventually start craving for it - all I can say is that I guess time will tell. I'm not quite there just yet but it was certainly a fun night and good experience for sure.
