The restaurant, more sizeable than I had imagined, was nearly empty when we arrived. Their special "party room" was booked for the night, but I have no idea how large that party was. The room was sectioned off from the rest of the restaurant and I couldn't get a visual. Just as we got to the restaurant, I noticed that it had started snowing outside. Snow at the end of February in VANCOUVER?!? It wasn't the best way to start off the night.
As we browsed through the menu, Hubbs suggested that we try omakase. Of course, they didn't have omakase at Yoshi's; they only had Kaiseki. Hubbs then suggested that we go for the full K, but I suggested that we stick with the mini-K, knowing that we'd get a bit too full if we went for the full meal deal.
We didn't know quite what to expect from the kaiseki menu, despite the descriptions of each course. It didn't matter too much, of course: we were ready for a culinary adventure. :)
As part of our appies, we were first served two items to kick off the meal: a cold mushroom salad and several types of "fish cakes" (fish pate). I enjoyed some of the pate but found the pieces a bit dense and filling for my tastes. I wanted to ease into the meal, and the mushroom salad accomplished this nicely. The fish cakes, however, were a bit much.
I was pretty excited to see the soup that our server brought to us next. Given the wintry conditions developing outside, I was starting to get a hankerin' for something warm and brothy. This clam soup was delightful and delicate, and the clams were fresh and tasty. They gave the soup a more full-bodied flavour and offered up some good texture to boot. This was a dish I quite enjoyed.
The dish we looked forward to most was served next: the sashimi. We both enjoyed some excellent cuts of fish that melted in our mouths and were generously sized. I liked the tuna the best, and I think Hubbs liked it all equally.
The grilled item came next. We ended up with a lovely cut of grilled salmon, though I found it overcooked (I like mine a little bit on the raw side). This was probably a leaner type of salmon, unlike the white spring salmon I'm so accustomed to. As a result, it was flaky and I only found it meh on the yum scale.
Our next course ended up being a deep fried item; I actually forgot that we had this item to go before our last savoury dish! Imagine my surprise (and slight fear) when the server brought out this deep fried yam or pumpkin or some other orange starchy veg, plus a deep fried shittake mushroom. I really enjoyed the mushroom but I found the other veg a bit heavy for the end of the meal so I didn't finish it. My tummy was getting full.
The finale: dessert. Hubbs isn't having ice cream for a year, so he ended up ordering fruit. I, however, stuck with the original dessert, which turned out to be a yummy vanilla ice cream drizzled with caramel, a red bean dessert, and strawberries. The red bean was a bit on the sweet side, but the ice cream finished my meal perfectly :)
Overall, I quite enjoyed our mini-kaiseki meal at Yoshi on Denman. Given their lack of patrons that night, I feel as though we really got top-notch service and good quality food for the dollar. The meal items were certainly not conventional, and the adventure was a lot of fun, even though we didn't love everything we were served. Yoshi may be an even better place to go for regular sushi items, though we can only surmise this based on the few types of sushi we tried that night. We'll likely be back to sample their maki and other types of sashimi in the future, since this omakaze-esque experience was relatively positive in our books.
Service: 4.5 out of 5
Food: 3.5 out of 5
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