Minami: Dine Out 2021
Dine Out Vancouver is a food festival where participating restaurants create 3-course menus for a set price. This year the festival takes place from February 5 – March 7 and instead of having set prices, it is up to the restaurant to decide how much their 3-course menu will be. In previous years, it was set to $25/$35/$45.
Minami is an upscale Japanese restaurant located in Yaletown. Minami is part of the Aburi brand of restaurants, which includes their sister restaurant Miku.
I had a hard time choosing between Minami or Miku for Dine Out. We’ve always had lovely experiences at both, but Minami’s Dine Out menu looked more enticing to me so we decided to choose Minami instead of Miku.
This review is based on an in-dining experience.
Interior
The interior of Minami is contemporary and fancy. Seating is comfortable and they spaced out the tables, but once the restaurant was fully seated, I felt like they could have spaced some tables out even more.
Unlike Miku, it doesn’t really have a view and I find the lighting to be darker in Minami.
Food
Minami’s 2021 Dine Out menu costs $55 per person.
We order some cocktails – the shiso mojito ($16) and the westward smoke ($18).
I found the mojito to be too sour. It was still easy to drink (i.e. you cannot taste the alcohol) but it would also have been better if there was less ice.
The westward smoke is one of those “man” cocktails. Basically, it tasted gross to me.
Appetizers
For appetizers, you can choose between the regular aburi oshi or a vegetarian aburi oshi. Since neither of us are vegetarian, we both choose to have the regular aburi oshi appetizer.
Aburi oshi
The sushi platter features 8 different pieces of sushi:
- Aburi Salmon Oshi: pressed wild sockeye salmon, jalapeño, Miku sauce
- Aburi Ebi Oshi: pressed prawn, lime zest, ume sauce
- Aburi Saba Oshi: pressed house cured mackerel, miso sauce,
- Red Wave Roll: chilean crab, avocado, wrapped in red tuna, masatake sauce
- Spicy Tuna Roll (2pcs): albacore and maguro tuna, spicy aioli
- Aburi Ora King Salmon Nigiri: roasted ao nori cherry tomato, sea asparagus, fresh ginger
- Aburi Hamachi Nigiri: yuzu kosho, Aburi lime, sweet basil, cilantro
Miku and Minami are like the early pioneers of aburi sushi in Vancouver – they were one of the first restaurants to offer pressed and seared box-like sushi. It is no doubt that I still find their OG salmon oshi delicious and amazing. A lot of restaurants offer salmon oshi now but I still don’t think it’s to Miku or Minami’s level. Sometimes the balance is off – there is too much rice or too much mayo or it’s not seared enough.
Out of the rest of the sushi, I also like the ebi oshi because of the sauce they used. The usual ebi oshi I eat uses olives and tastes almost like pasta (strange, I know, but still good).
I also like the red wave roll – tastes like what a california roll SHOULD taste like.
We also really liked the hamachi nigiri with the lemon. We thought it tasted better than the king salmon nigiri. The tomato on the king salmon nigiri threw us off a little bit.
Entrees
There are 3 choices for an entree. For vegetarians, they offer a tempeh steak. We select the other 2 non-vegetarian entrees.
Fraser Valley Chicken Ballotine
This chicken entree has brome lake foie gras and chicken stuffing, market
vegetable medley, shio miso chicken reduction, chicken tuile and celeriac purée.
Usually, I wouldn’t order a chicken dish at a Japanese restaurant (I would opt for seafood), but I really liked this entree! Presentation is elegant and sophisticated and portion size was just right.
The chicken is very juicy and flavourful – it almost didn’t taste like chicken! Even the vegetable medley was delicious – the carrots had deep flavours and pretty colours.
Baked Saikyo Miso YK3 Sakekasu BC Steelhead
The second entree features celeriac-parsnip purée, popped farro sansai, yuzu miso sauce, wasabi pickles, nutrigreens farm organic baby greens and parsnip crisps.
The steelhead salmon is cooked well and falls apart with my fork (no need for a knife). I like the bed of vegetables and other items they lay underneath it along with the puree.
A decent entree but I still preferred the chicken entree over this dish.
Dessert
There is only 1 choice for dessert.
Dark Chocolate Hojicha Brownie
This dessert has hojicha (roasted matcha) cream, malt crumble, candied yuzu, yuzu orange coulis, aburi meringue and yuzu curd.
Presentation-wise, I thought it looked too small at first glance but after a few bites, I realized it was just enough. The brownie is dense and harder than it looks, but has a rich chocolate flavour. I like the malt crumble and yuzu elements to balance this sweetness.
I also really like the presentation of the meringue and yuzu smears on the plate. Sometimes the way sauces are presented are pretty but don’t make sense when it comes time to eat, but I find that it is easy to scoop some of the brownie and get some of the yuzu and meringue based on where they placed it.
My only complaint about this dessert is that you can’t really taste the hojicha element.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
We enjoyed our Dine out at Minami and thought the menu was certainly worth the $55 price point. Compared to Miku’s menu where their aburi sushi platter is an entree instead of an appetizer, I was glad I got to eat their oshi AND have a starter (instead of choosing to have sushi as my entree).
We left the restaurant feeling full but not stuffed (always appreciate a well balanced course meal). Minami stays high up on our top rated restaurants!
Sincerely, Loewe