Land & Sea: Valentine’s Day Dinner in Kerrisdale

Land & Sea is an Asian fusion restaurant located in Kerrisdale. They are a new restaurant that opened in 2021 and have been on my list to try for awhile, so we decided to book them for Valentine’s Day this year.

Just a side note, but if you are a foodie, you probably know how horrendous it is to try to book a restaurant for Valentine’s Day. I was only able to secure an 8pm time slot for the Sunday before Valentine’s Day and I booked in early January – remember to book early if you care!

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Interior

We chose indoor seating, although they also have an undercover and heated patio. We were seated pretty deep inside the restaurant, near the fireplace and washroom hall. Our table view was facing the open kitchen. We were also seated kind of side by side on the angle, so we weren’t facing each other directly, but we didn’t care much about this.

Interior is warm and cozy, a romantic feeling and lighting is a little dim.

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Drinks

We each order 1 cocktail from their drinks menu.

Straw to my Berry ($19)

I order one of their special Valentine’s Day cocktails – the straw to my berry. This cocktail has citrus-infused Gin, strawberry, yuzu, and is lengthened with cava. The cocktail itself is quite pretty and I liked the fruit they added on top. Taste wise, it mostly tasted like a fizzy aerol spritz – very fruity. However, I’m not sure the $19 price tag is worth it.

Yuzu-kissed Sour ($18)

My boyfriend orders the yuzu-kissed sour (we love yuzu based drinks). This cocktail uses buffalo trace bourbon, blackberries, egg white, lemon, and citrus peel syrup. The presentation is very pretty and cute (not a man-looking cocktail if that’s what you’re looking for lol). It tastes really good! I think it tastes better than my own cocktail and we really like the blackberries in the drink.

Food

Land & Sea had a special Valentine’s Day menu for $150 per person, but it was only available on actual Valentine’s Day. Since we came the day before Valentine’s Day, we just ordered off their regular menu.

Ora King Salmon Soba ($31)

This is their signature appetizer and photos of this dish is all over social media. This appetizer has flame finished ora king salmon, green tea soba, creamy sesame ponzu, yuzu tobiko, and ikura on top. Now I first have to say that this is an appetizer, and so it’s actually VERY small. In the photos, it looks really big, maybe because of all the close-up shots. Hell – even my own picture here makes it look big but it’s actually more like a 1-2 biter if you share it with another person.

Nevertheless, this appetizer is very delicious. I’ve had Ora king salmon steak before at Miku for a previous Valentine’s Day, and it is much more fatty and tasty than regular salmon. This piece is cooked perfectly and very soft (falls apart when you touch it with a fork). The ikura gives it a burst of flavour and the soba makes this dish quite refreshing.

Chili Crab ($46)

This is a pasta dish and it’s their take on the Singaporean chili crab. They use Dungeness crab & snow crab ravioli, quail egg drop, sweet tomato chili, soft shell crab tempura, and tobiko.

I really liked this dish as it was super yummy! I especially liked the soft shell crab tempura on top because it gives it a nice crunchy texture to the soft ravioli. The ravioli has a lot of crab in it and the sweet tomato chili is both sweet and spicy. A very unique dish I haven’t tried anywhere else!

Unagi Risotto ($38)

This is another pasta dish with eel, carnaroli rice, tiger prawns, green peas, 63 degree egg, ikura, mentsuyu butter, and sansho pepper. We added uni for $6 and you can also add Hokkaido uni for $20.

This dish is quite a large decent portion. We liked cutting up the egg and letting that mix into the risotto. The eel is cooked well and the risotto is very creamy. Overall, a filling and rich dish. I found the dish can be a little too rich if eaten alone by 1 person and I also feel like the eel and the risotto aren’t the best partners (feels like eating 2 separate dishes).

Vongole XO ($33)

Our last main dish is also a pasta dish lol. This one is a classic vongole with an Asian twist – XO sauce! This pasta has chitarra, fanny bay clams, sake, garlic butter, house made baby clam xo, and micro-cilantro.

This dish was actually spicy! The spice builds up after you’ve been eating it for awhile, but it’s not too spicy for us. This vongole was very saucy and also had some strong flavours, which is different from other vongoles I’ve had where it’s mostly a wine-based sauce.

Black Sesame Chocolate Brownie ($15)

Unfortunately, the panna cotta dessert we wanted was sold out so we ordered this brownie dessert instead. It’s a black sesame brownie with kinako gelato, shiratama and their own homemade mochi.

This dessert was not bad and we could definitely taste the black sesame so that made it a bit more special than a regular brownie. The mochi is very chewy.

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Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

We enjoyed our Valentine’s Day dinner at Land & Sea. Our bill after everything was around $250 and our server was really wonderful and took photos for us and explained dishes.

Out of everything we ate, I liked the king salmon soba and chili crab dish the most. I also found them the most unique so I would say these 2 are a must order! I also enjoyed the other 2 pastas but again, the unagi risotto was a little too rich for me and I just don’t appreciate vongole pastas that much (I find the little clam meats too little).

Some of their other menu items we considered ordering were the shiso wrap appetizer ($15) and the wagyu ($80), but the prices seemed a little too high for the amount of food we saw in photos posted by other people.

Overall, this restaurant is definitely very Asian fusion and all their dishes try to have an interesting twist to them. Quality of food is good and prices are high to reflect that. They also seem to be very “Instagram-worthy” focused, so bring an Instagram friend to check them out.

Sincerely, Loewe