It is difficult to write about ShuRaKu because I used to love it there and have recommended it a lot to my friends. So I chose the restaurant to meet my friend Jason, who was visiting family in town for the holidays. I was pretty excited walking in there after more than a couple years of absence from this place – I just hardly hit Granville street anymore, and there are just so many other great choices for izakaya in the West End and Yaletown. I noticed that they still had the same menu after all these years, so I ordered a few of my favourite dishes. Unfortunately some of them fell short and rather disappointing.
The Eggplant Popper dish looked adorable, and the poppers were well fried. However I tasted the batter more than the actual eggplant filing which lacked of seasoning.
Although they put real snow crab meat in this California Roll, it doesn’t look or taste much better than any cheap sushi joints – slightly underwhelming.
This was one of my favorite dish. However today the octopus pieces were so much smaller and barely visible buried under pickled greens . It used to be such a vibrant dish!!! (See the dish from 2 years ago at the bottom of the page.)
Japanese Short Rib was tasty but the presentation definitely fell off the swag wagon. Look at what they post on their website:
And now look at our plate below! Where are the beautiful char marks? Where is the luscious glaze? And they even skipped the sesame seeds!
Volcano Roll had been one of the best artfully designed free style rolls for me. Today it still got a few wows from my friends. But the cool factors had worn off. There were too much tempura crumbs and bonito flakes were non existent. (See the dish from 2 years ago at the bottom of the page.)
Renkon Kinpira was decent and delicious. Lotus root is one of my most favourite ingredients after all. They fried lotus root well enough so that it was not too crunchy to conflict with the tempura exterior.
Grilled Whole Quid was nice to look at, but it was not consistently cooked through. Some parts was cooked adequately and some were over cooked.
I understand the fact that ShuRaKu is located at one of the busiest street corner in downtown Vancouver, and they will always be busy because of all the tourists and shoppers. Perhaps mediocre food is sufficient enough to keep them going, but I feel sad as I really miss the good old times at this place.
Official website:
Maps and other reviews:
Pictures from 2 years ago:
