CUISINE / RESTAURANT REVIEWS Japanese Vancouver

Shishinori

Shishinori

Fannypack and I have been at a running club for 3 weeks now, so we’ve been up and down a specific section of the Cambie strip for a while.  Now we’ve noticed a little new Japanese restaurant called Shishinori serving Japanese style cafe-ish food.  So we set a date to have dinner after one of our runs.

Shishinori - interior

Shishinori has a pretty small interior but they did manage to squeeze in an ample amount of seating.  Come sunset though, most of the seats do get the sun in the face.

Shishinori - Wild Salmon Paradise Bowl

There was so much to choose from.  I did finally manage to choose the Wild Salmon Paradise Bowl ($10.50) and made it a combo for $2.50 more.  Actually, originally I wanted to get their Matcha Ice Cream Float with Mochi but was sadly informed that they’re cleaning out their soft serve machine…so no dice =( and settled for the combo instead.

For the combo you can pick either an iced or hot tea, and either a soup or a dessert.  I picked the Iced Ginger Peach Tea and dessert, of which today was Matcha Jello.  And by matcha they mean the normal leafy jasmine-ish green tea, made in a flavored agar jello, sprinkled with a small amount of matcha powder.

The tea was very light and quite refreshing.  It was more peach than ginger.  The mint added nothing to the taste.  It was just slightly sweetened which was big in my books.  The jello was equally light in sweetness with a drizzle of cream or milk.

Shishinori - Wild Salmon Paradise Bowl

The Wild Salmon Paradise Bowl has (very tiny) diced wild salmon sashimi, avocado, mango, and seaweed in a yukke type dressing (sweet and savory), on top of a small amount of brown rice, but underneath s***loads of spinach, lotus root, red cabbage, daikon, radishes, alfafa sprouts, carrots, etc.  It’s basically a salad.  It probably IS a salad.

On the side is a half of a cherry tomato on a slice of daikon, tiny smear of corn, egg and potato salad, an even smaller smear of wasabi, and some pickled ginger.  There’s also half of a soft-boiled egg.

When all mixed together, this was a very delicious salad.  I was however disappointed with the minuscule amount of wild salmon.  And the half of a cherry tomato.  I thought for the price, there could be more “substance”.

Shishinori - Curried Chicken Bowl

Fannypack had her eye on the Curried Chicken Bowl ($9.50).  It basically has the same salad as mine minus the salmon paradise part, and with more rice.  She also made it a combo and picked the Hot Passionfruit and Mango Tea as her drink.  The tea was very fragrant and I could probably say tasted better than mine.

Shishinori - Curried Chicken Bowl

We expected anything “curry chicken” to be served hot, but this was served cold.  Almost salad cold.  Maybe it was meant to be a salad?  We didn’t ask or confirm.

The curry tasted like Glico brand Japanese curry.  I still couldn’t get over the fact that this dish was cold though.  The potatoes were almost chilled.

Shishinori - Apple Raspberry Mint Mochi

Lastly, notice how Fannypack’s tea came in a paper cup?  We ate in so it was supposed to be served in a nice teapot and teacup combination, however we were informed they ran out.

No big deal, we didn’t even really care.  However it must’ve bothered them enough, because they brought us complimentary mochi.  Now I heard the server say Apple Mint Mochi, but here I can clearly see raspberries, and tasted no apple, so I’m just going to call this Apple Raspberry Mint Mochi.

I’m pretty sure they’re homemade.  The raspberries were tart and fresh and the mochi were the perfect soft and chewy consistency.  Also not too sweet.  The bigger round piece on top actually had red bean paste in the middle.  I enjoyed this too.

Their hours indicate that they close at 6pm Monday to Friday, but we were here on Wednesday and were clearly here at around 7pm, so obviously they’ve changed their hours and now offer dinner too.

In the end, Shishinori served a good, light and healthy dinner.  I really liked the fact that none of their sweet items were overly sweet, and the dressing on my wild salmon bowl was very tasty.  However neither of us were impressed with the “bang for our buck” here.  We were ESPECIALLY unimpressed with the cold curry dish.

Will we be back???  Hmm…..probably just for the parfait…when their soft serve machine is fixed…

shishinori-menu

Shishinori Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

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Shishinori Japanese Eatery
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