[2015 Food] Sura Korean Restaurant

Today's my foodie day again~ went to two different restaurant (one for lunch and one for dinner). Both were pretty good. I will take the time to write about them throughout the week - I do have to prep for finals...

Sura is the place I had passed through multiple times when I was trying different restaurants on Robson. It's another Korean restaurant on this Korean block :D. This is a really popular restaurant which does not take reservation and often has ~30min line up at meal time.

Taste ★★★★☆ 

Portion ★★★☆☆ 

Service ★★★★☆

 Cost $$$

Not Really Recommended. It's nice for a well-prepared/ cooked Korean meal, but the line up/ wait and the portion killed the deal. The lunch set menus could be worth it if the wait isn't long.

Taste
The food was nicely prepared here. They've put effort into presenting the food, so they all look pretty savory when they came up. Most of them are on the sweeter side while the food I had in Korea were all more on the salty side -  it's still authentic and nicely cooked~ so it's just my personal preference. Honestly, I don't think there's anything you can order wrong on the menu, the menu has all the pictures and they all look really great and just like the way they will bring it to your table (almost). Except in smaller portion than on the picture :P.

The taste here did not surpass my favourite Korean place in Coquitlum, but I believe, in downtown Vancouver, this could be the best.

 Side dishes:

Sea weed - salty and sweet

I still didn't figure out what this is, tasted like fried yam in some sweet sauce - I like this side

kimchi - I actually love their kimchi - not too spicy and it's sour and salty - tastes authentic.

Dishes: 

#19 Bossam = Sliced Pork belly simmered in Herbs: The meat is cooked to just the right softness and the sweet BBQish sauce on top brings out the sweetness of pork. It didn't feel fatty when I was eating it. The combo with the sides - the spicy bean sauce they provided, the raddish (flower like one and kimchi ones in the can) as well as the veggie matched really well --> LOVE it.

#42 Japchae - stir fried potato noodles in sweet sesame oil with beef and mixed veggies  : My must-eat at any Korean restaurant. This is not the best I've had, but it was decent. Tasted great, sweet and salty, with enough veggies and some beef slices in there. The noodles are cooked so that it retained its strength, not too soft, not too hard.

The size of their rice is slightly small - but if you've ordered noodles or rice, you won't really need this.

#38 Soondubu Jjigae - Spicy tofu stew (seafood): you can choose beef instead of seafood, but we chose seafood. There was shrimp, octopus, and I believe clams (?). And lots of tofu lol- the soup is nice, not too spicy, seasoned just right. Tastes even better with kimchi

 Drinks

Pineapple Soju Cocktail: I didn't take a picture of the yogurt one, but it just look more milky orange. My friends prefer the yogurt one compared to this. I really love pineapple, so I liked mine. It's even got real pineapple fruit in there (so the straw was useless, I just drank from the jar. It's a bit too small in portion though... didn't think it's worth $7. It tasted like pineapple can + Sprite + soju ==> can make this myself :P

Portion
The portion of each plate is on the smaller side for the price. I wasn't that hungry to begin with and by the end of dinner, I was just full. Three dishes filled 3 girls' stomach, I guess it was still fair, but I can see how it will NOT be enough for guys. I don't know if we can refill the kimchi (side dishes), but I I felt like we had enough.

Service
When you entered the restaurant, make sure to have your name put on the list by the host - and ask him how long the wait is, if he forgets to tell you. The food came in reasonable time- oddly, our drinks came after all the foods were on the table. I don't mind that actually, but it was unusual - the server apologized lol - I was like, I don't mind. They do clear the table (almost) right after you are finished and give you the bill after asking you if you'd like anything else. The server said he didn't mean to rush us, but I do realize they have a bunch of people still waiting by the door- so we quickly got out. Overall, their service was good. I have nothing to complain.

Cost
This place has fairly economic lunch sets for $15 or $20 and you get a variety of different dishes. The portion is not really that big here, though. I went with 2 other girl friends and all of us were just filled with 3 orders of food. We also each had a cocktail soju - so the cost for each came to $25/ person. - which, is quite fair, I guess, given the atmosphere and the food quality/ presentation.

Overall, it was a great dinner experience, I just didn't think the wait was THAT worth it. Maybe downtown is just not the place to look for Korean food :P the best ones are still in Coquitlum~
I will write about my other restaurant experience later in the week.
ttyl

Bye Bye ~ ★

[2015 Food] Fish On Rice - My past favourite Japanese AYCE

Ever since our discovery of this place like almost 10 years ago (when I was in grade 9). Our family has frequented this restaurant and it has been our favourite for the first few years. After the management/operation tactics/ cooks changed a few times, we just settled for it, because we couldn't find any other place better or more convenient than Fish on Rice...

It used to be a very popular restaurant - without a reservation, even on weekdays, it was hard to seat 4 people. I paid more than 3 visits to this place over the past 3 months and it has certainly dropped in popularity over the years. It was quite noticeable, though, they have just changed management this month. The menu, pricing, items, and the actually food has changed quite drastically this time compared to my last visit (in mid February).

Without Further a due~
Fish on Rice

Taste ★★★☆☆

Portion ★★★★★

Service ★★★★☆

Cost $$ 

Not Recommended. An ok AYCE place if you'd like some sashimi (raw fish), but you can't expect the quality to be that good.

The actual restaurant might be harder to find for first timers- it's diagonally across from Crystal mall on the Kingsway side. The mall beside it has Market Place and Shopper's Drug Mart. It is upstairs of Earls. Just enter from the entrance for the building beside Earls - the door is not locked. (I forgot to take picture... sorry ~"~)

The decor of this place is quite good, nice Japanese sushi ya sort of style - they even got tatami-like rooms for larger groups (usually > 4 ppl).

From the food and portion plus the marketing thing they're doing (if you upload photos to social network with their address, you get 5% off), we are sure they've just changed their management team. The foods' quality and taste were also different (got worse) so I'm sure they've changed the cook, too. The service this time is more attentive and they've got the wireless credit card machine. This is the only improvement (quite important, though).

They do offer a la carte (order single items) menu, but we always go for the All You Can Eat (AYCE).

 Here is the menu (Chinese + English 1 page- double sided): I forgot to take picture of the order sheet (English) - you'll see a pencil at the side of your table and you just put down the quantity of each item you want to order. You will get 2 sheets = 2 rounds of order (usually, but today we only got 1 sheet - we always order the same things now, so we didn't need another one anyways)
It's all you can eat, so you can try a little of everything then order more the second round if you need/want.

 The salad that we love the most - Green salad
Sour and sweet orange sauce (not sure what's in there) with cucumber, carrot, lattuce 

 On the right - the Cone (temaki) - spicy salmon and spicy tuna. Their scallop one is also decent. This has always been our favourite item
On the left - sushi - hokkigai sushi (some sort of shell fish?) , avocado sushi (my mom wanted, apparently avocado is super expensive in China), and dynamite roll (fried prawn)
The size of the dynamite roll sushi had decreased so much O_O it's almost a 30-40% reduction. But, whatever- it's all you can eat - order more if you need to lol

 Beef ribs- also one of our favourites - sweet and salty, the beef is a bit dry, but it's BBQed pretty well

 Teriyaki - vegetable and chicken. Their teriyaki is pretty decent. It's a bit more on the sweet side, but it's as good as any other Japanese food place could offer.

 The main reason why we love this place - SASHIMI!!! As you can see, we love the salmon one more LOL
There's a limit of 6 pieces/adult. - which is why I can get a lot when I bring my sis or BF w/ me hahah (neither of them eat anything raw).
Today's sashimi were so small... they kept decreasing in size... it's getting to a point where I can't really say is acceptable...
This time, the salmon one didn't even taste that fresh. It's not that noticeable for people who doesn't eat sashimi often, maybe- but I noticed it O_O"
Tuna sashimi today was great! (should've ordered more pieces) it was fresh and melt in my mouth :P yum~~

 Tempura - Yam (yellow), vegetable (carrot - red, cucumber- green, pumpkin- yellow/orange)
Their sauce (for fried food) was more salty this time.
The yam and veggies had been cut too thin... = = I mean, really?!
It's decent - just no longer that good.

 Lemon chicken - this is new item - Chinese food items added onto the menu.
My mom said it was decent. I never really liked sour and sweet meat anyways- so I didn't like it.

The bill came to $31 (including tax and tips) for 2 people (there's a price increase- again). Which, considering both of us were really full and don't have the appetite for dinner- it was of good portion (well, it is AYCE). We didn't order round 2, though, cuz we didn't think the food was good...

I'm sad to see that Fish On Rice can no longer delivery good-enough taste and quality to continue to be my favourite Japanese place. Maybe I will give them a try again - but I don't think that would happen any time soon...

No more Japanese food for a few weeks, I guess~ gotta study for finals (?!).
ttyl

Bye bye~ ★