Miyako Sushi

The downtown core of Vancouver has around 50 sushi restaurants. You would think that much selection would make it easy to replace my (old) favorite lunchtime sushi restaurant since the office move. I certainly don't mind trying new places, but I want to find THE ONE. The good, reliable one that I can go to over and over when I don't feel like something new. My criteria for the one is available seating, good lunchtime specials, a clean bathroom and quick- but polite- service. I think I have found a contender in Miyako Sushi on West Pender.



My sushi gang- Adele, Cristina, Andrie and me- went for a lunch date to check it out. The restaurant is fairly large, and by the time 12:00 hit, very busy. We were able to be seated right away. There is also a take out cooler near the door that had meals and rolls to go.



Andrie chose one of the lunch combos, Assorted Tempura with California Roll (served with miso soup) $8.95



She enjoyed the tempura, saying that it was crisp and not greasy. I noted the lack of blotter paper under the tempura and there wasn't a puddle of grease. She also said that she liked the lack of cucumber in the rolls. She has a weird thing against cucumber while I like my rolls to be full of as much stuff as they can pack in. She liked the creaminess of the rolls and said they were not heavy on they mayonnaise.

Cristina chose one of the vegetarian lunch box options, Box B (vegetarian) $9.95. Miso soup, green salad, 6psc. cucumber and avocado roll, vegetable tempura, tofu teriyaki on rice and fruit.



This was a good looking box. She said the same about the tempura and liked the batter on the tofu. There was a really generous portion of avocado in the rolls. Another plus was the green salad. I normally dislike the salad that come with these boxes because they are iceberg lettuce from a bag with an obscene amount of dressing. This was actually a salad they made, it wasn't fancy, but it was fresh and well portioned.

Adele went with a couple of rolls, salmon and avocado roll $3.75 and spicy salmon roll $3.75



She was very happy with the rolls. The salmon and avocado roll had a nice ratio of salmon to avocado, in comparison to some other rolls recently. The spicy salmon roll was not overwhelmed with sauce, and she enjoyed these as well.

Since this was my first visit to Miyako, I had to order the pork gyoza $3.95.



Bonus points awarded for serving them in a boat. I love when food is served in the boat. The gyoza were good. Not greasy, nice crisp on the wrapper and the filling was tasty. I couldn't tell if they were made in house, but I liked them.

I ordered my meal mainly for the name, the low carb box. Miso soup, sunomono, salmon and tuna sashimi, dynamite roll, chicken teri and fruit. $10.95



I didn't think we were still doing low carb. In the end, I loved this box. I do have a tendency to eat the fish off the sushi and not eat the rice for teriyaki, so this serving was perfect for me. The sashimi was nicely cut and really fresh. I liked the bits of crabmeat in the sunomono. The "fruit" section made me laugh. The picture in the menu shows a large serving of oranges and grapes. The one I got, not so much. This has a really good chance at becoming my regular order as I liked the selection and it is a really good price for the amount of food I got.

We left Miyako happy and full. I will continue on my search of sushi downtown, but I know we will come back here again.

Cheers!