Gyoza Bar: Dine Out 2019

Dine Out Vancouver is a food festival with over 200 participating restaurants that offer 3-course menus at different price points: $15/$25/$35/$45. It’s a fun way to try different restaurants in Vancouver that you may not normally go to.

The fourth Dine Out I went to was at Gyoza Bar, a contemporary brick-walled spot for Japanese dumplings, tapas and ramen. I’ve been to Gyoza Bar many times before. I do like their ramen and as for gyoza, theirs are eerily similar to the ones my mom makes at home (they are delicious!). Because of that I don’t usually order the gyozas, but if I didn’t have my mom I probably would!

Gyoza Bar’s Dine Out 2019 $25 menu is as follows (you choose one of the following for each category):

Appetizers

For appetizers, we ordered the pork gyoza and beef gyoza.

The pork gyoza is their classic menu item, served with umami soy sauce and spicy miso. This is the gyoza that tastes like my mom’s and since she is a great cook, these get a big thumbs up from me. I just wouldn’t pay for them because they’re free at home.

The beef gyoza was deep-fried and decorated with gochujang (Korean red pepper paste), making it slightly sour and spicy. Underneath it was a kale-quinoa salad with white balsamic vinaigrette. It was yummy but the portion size was smaller than the pork gyozas.

Entrees

For entrees, we ordered the chicken nanban bao board and the spicy tonkotsu ramen.

The chicken nanban bao board comes with two white bao (Chinese bun), lettuce and asian slaw, and deep-fried chicken covered in a house made tartar sauce. The board also came with a kombu butter poached half lobster tail, which is an upgrade from their usual nanban bao board. The sauce was a herb dijon mustard and was very strong in flavour.

I’ve ordered the scallop nanban bao board before from their regular menu and wasn’t a fan of how it tasted with the bao bun. The chicken tasted much better, combined with the vegetables and the tartar sauce. The only thing I didn’t like too much was that I had to build it myself, causing my hands to get dirty.

The spicy tonkotsu ramen is from their regular menu and my friend loves it. Again for Dine Out, they added a half lobster tail as an added plus.

Desserts

For desserts there was only one choice – the rice pudding. It was paired with a mango sorbet, that I originally thought was a little cantaloupe, and had fresh fruit macedonia, candied cashew and basil.

The dessert wasn’t a win for me – the rice pudding was too liquid for my taste and in general it tasted kind of bland unless you mixed the mango sorbet with it.

Final thoughts

In total I spent $30 after tax and tip. This was a pretty decent price for three courses and isn’t too far off from how much I would normally spend at Gyoza Bar.

Sincerely, Loewe