Suika: Two visits, one blog post

One of the challenges in having a food blog is keeping it up-to-date with when I actually visited the restaurant. Unfortunately, that is still something I'm working on. I've visited Suika again before I had the chance to blog about it so my two visits will be combined into one big post. 

Beer bottle lights

A very prominent and creative design - colourful Japanese beer bottle lights hanging from the ceiling.

Salad

In addition to being served green tea, we were also given green salad to start off. I really liked this - the greens were fresh and the dressing was very appetizing. And, you could ask for more salad too.

Double tonkatsu set (deep fried pork cutlets with homemade breadcrumbs) $12.80

Double tonkatsu

I got the double tonkatsu set and even for me, it was huge. It came with miso soup, rice, and two different types of sauce. The waitress told me to grind the black and white sesame and put it in the sauce. I did that, but I don't think it made a big difference (or perhaps I didn't do it properly). The pork cutlets were served on a rack which was smart, because nobody likes soggy breadcrumbs. I wasn't a fan of the sauce. Even without dipping into any sauce, I didn't find it dry.

My friend got the seafood don and it had a variety of fresh sashimi and seafood. It came with miso soup as well and looked very good, but she liked my order more. As a result, I happily let her help me eat some of it so that I was able to leave nothing behind :). 

Seafood bowl set

SECOND VISIT:

Green salad with amazing dressing

As I mentioned, my friend really liked the double tonkatsu set so we decided to come here after our last Brain Day presentation. We got to the restaurant just past 11am, but then we found out that they actually open half an hour later. Luckily, they had their doors unlocked already so we were allowed to sit inside on the couches and they even handed us the menu. Of course, my friend didn't need that since she had her mind set on the double tonkatsu. I could tell that Suika is a popular place because shortly after, another group arrived (before they were even opened). Right at 11:30am, they seated us and again, served us with fresh green salad with the yummy dressing that I really liked.

To start off, we got the hamachi carpaccio. There were 8 pieces with bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts. I think there was a bit too much mayonnaise and sauce as it was too flavourful in that I couldn't really taste the fresh fish itself.

hamachi carpacio 

This time, I got the beef tendon bowl set. Again, it was a generous amount (or perhaps I ate too much salad...). I was actually expecting pieces of beef but the beef was shredded and mixed with egg, onions, and some veggies served on top of rice. The rice was a tad too gooey for my liking this time, but it did mix together easily with the beef and egg. It was yummy, flavourful, and gooey.

Beef tendon bowl set ($8.80)

Stewed beef tendon and egg on rice 

I look forward to trying Suika's sister restaurants someday: Kingyo in downtown and newly opened, Rajio in the Point Grey area.