Raisu: Japanese anniversary dinner in Kitsilano

My boyfriend and I celebrated our anniversary in our favourite way: eating delicious food! This year for our anniversary dinner, we chose Raisu.

Raisu is a contemporary Japanese eatery in Kitsilano. They are famous for their special bento boxes, which they only make 10-15 every lunch and dinner service. We were able to reserve a sho ka do bento over the phone, but unable to reserve the ocean’s offering bento.

Interior

Raisu is located on the second floor of a retail street. You go up the stairs and it opens up to a kitchen on the left and a giant bar in the middle made with bottles of sake on top. They have a Japanese futon-style patio for large tables.

Our table is hidden behind a fireplace so it is more difficult than usual to get a server to notice us. But in general, service is Raisu is below average. They take more than 5 minutes to greet us when we come in and when they finally greet us, we are not shown to our table right away even though we have reservations.

Food

Wagyu croquette ($12)

There is a piece of paper that says, “Today’s special sheet”. From this sheet, we try the 100% wagyu croquette.

Wagyu means “Japanese beef”. Wagyu is known for having a marbled appearance and a melt-in-your-mouth experience.

This appetizer only comes with two croquettes and your choice of either a mayo or a tonkatsu sauce. Tonkatsu sauce is a sauce often eaten with deep-fried cutlets and made from vegetables and fruits.

The wagyu croquette is very juicy. Very very juicy! It is the best beef croquette I have eaten in Vancouver. Appearance wise, it looks small but it makes up for it with big flavours and dripping juices. It definitely tastes more savoury and filling than it looks. Both sauces are good pairings.

Sho ka do Bento ($32)

The Sho ka do bento is limited to 15 servings per lunch and dinner. It has 9 components and these 9 mini appetizers change depending on the season. Reminder: you can reserve this bento over the phone when you make your reservation.

Yuzu chicken wings

We start off with some chicken wings. The wings are deep fried and marinated with yuzu (citrus) sauce. They are kind of spicy and tangy from the lime. I’m not sure what the red strings are made from but they don’t add much to the flavour. In general, it is just a nice chicken wing.

Seaweed & snow crab on egg

This appetizer has seaweed floating in a light soy sauce base. Inside is half of a soft-boiled ramen egg with the yolk removed. Instead, they fill the egg with some shredded snow crab, topped with fish roe and some vegetables.

Fish & grapefruit salad

This mini dish is a salad consisting of fish meat, crab meat, vegetables and grapefruit. The grapefruit is an interesting element because we both thought it was salmon from a first glance. A small refreshing salad, nothing else much to say.

Meatballs

We eat the meatballs next after our salad. It is made of different types of shredded beef and pork. The sauce is similar to a tonkatsu sauce but less salty.

After tasting the wagyu croquette, this meatball tastes average.

Deep-fried fish salad

We go back to another salad dish after the meatball. This one is a more western salad featuring two pieces of battered fish (not salmon) with mayo and tobiko (fish eggs).

The deep-fried fish is lightly fried and not oily, making the mayo a pleasant pairing.

Tako wasabi

To eat tako wasabi (octopus and japanese horseradish), you take a piece of the seaweed, place bits of the raw octopus flavoured with wasabi, roll or fold it up and eat it.

I usually don’t eat tako wasabi because it is too spicy for me, but the tako wasa at Raisu is not spicy at all. It is refreshing, chewy and yummy.

Scallops and eggplant with bonito flakes

This dish consists of marinated scallops and eggplants. They place katsuobushi (dried, fermented, and smoked skipjack tuna flakes) on top. My boyfriend is not a fan of eggplants but I enjoyed this dish.

Ebi ponzu

The term ebi mayo means shrimp and mayo. In Raisu’s case, the shrimp is deep fried and instead of mayo, they place some horeseradish and soak the shrimp in ponzu (citrus) sauce. This makes it slightly soggy on one side.

Aburi sushi

This is one piece of aburi (flame-seared and pressed) sushi. This one is a tuna with mayo on top. There is also a second tuna filling inside the sushi.

The rice to fish ratio is very important to me when it comes to aburi sushi, and I find this piece to have a good ratio. In general, this is quite a large piece of sushi.

Snow crab and uni cream udon ($20)

This dish is listed in “Today’s special sheet” but we find it is on their regular menu.

Udon is a thick Japanese noodle, perfect for broths and soups. It is amazing with the creamy sea urchin soup. We don’t leave a single drop in the bowl!

For toppings, they add snow crab, which is sweet, along with salmon caviar (fish roe), which is very salty. Popping the fish roe in your mouth along with the sweet and creamy soup sends little blasts of salty sea flavours.

Deluxe seafood bowl ($36)

We originally wanted to order the Ocean’s Offering bento (sushi box) but like the sho ka do bento, they only make 10 servings per lunch and dinner so they were unavailable by the time we were seated after 7 pm.

Instead, we choose the deluxe seafood bowl, which comes with slices of ahi tuna, yellow tail, snow crab, tai snapper, salmon, ikura and sweet shrimp on top of premium Koshihikari sushi rice. It also has some gold sprinkled on top just because.

How do we eat this? First we dump all the greenery and salad to the side (we were getting full). Definitely get rid of the yellow flower too. We remove the two tamago (egg) slices for last as a “dessert”.

We eat the sweet prawn first with a bit of soy sauce. After that, we start with the uni (sea urchin).

I know a lot of people love uni (my relatives, especially), but my boyfriend and I actually find uni to be too fishy. We find it is often too salty for us and literally tastes like the ocean, which if you have ever accidentally drank sea water, is not too pleasant. But hey, if you love uni, it’s included in this bowl and they give you at least 4 pieces.

Next we eat the scallops and we are now finally in the row of beautifully sliced sashimi.

The slices of sashimi are thick. We recommend you to start eating it from left to right (based on how fatty the sashimi is). We always like to end it with the toro (fatty tuna).

Please eat it with the sushi rice in the bowl. Depending on what else you order, you may already have a bowl of rice – do not eat that with this fish. The rice in the wooden deluxe seafood bowl is seasoned sushi rice and tastes much better paired with the slices of fish than the regular rice in a bowl.

Dessert

Souffle cheesecake ($8)

Imagine you buy a fluffy Japanese cheesecake from Uncle Tetsu or Castella for $10, and then you cut a slice of it, add some cream and fruit and then charge someone else $8 for it. That’s basically what this dessert is like in terms of value.

I suppose one positive thing about Raisu’s cheesecake is that it is yummy and it is risen very well. It also tastes slightly more rich than Uncle Tetsu or Castella – more cheesecake flavour and less “air flavour” as we like to call it. The pistachio and fruit sauce is a great pairing for it flavour wise and texture wise.

Almond tofu ($6)

We order this because we see a lot of other tables ordering it. The menu describes it as “light and refreshing almond tofu with fresh peach sauce”.

It is indeed very light and refreshing. Unfortunately, I don’t like almond-flavoured things. Have you tried almond milk before? It is the sweetest thing I have tasted blegh.

The almond tofu has this almond flavour which is slightly too sweet for me, but the peach sauce saves this dessert. It makes it fruity and balances out the sweetness.

We are both interested to see how it would taste if this is almond pudding instead of almond tofu, but this is still an original dessert and worth trying even if you’re not a fan of almond.

Final thoughts

We spent around $130 in total after tax and tip for two people. The food was good and there are several dishes that we did think were unique and special. Presentation is a 10/10 for Raisu.

We probably won’t be ordering the sho ka do bento again, but we will be ordering the udon and maybe the deluxe seafood bowl again. We just found for $30, the appetizer bento didn’t have a lot of our favourite items and too much salad components.

I am disappointed I couldn’t try the Ocean’s Offering bento and that we were not allowed to reserve one beforehand. Another thing that was disappointing is their service. It is a really busy restaurant and they are likely to be understaffed, but we found it hard to get our server’s attention. This could be due to our seating.

The atmosphere and the ambience of the restaurant isn’t too intimate so it’s not exactly the most romantic atmosphere, but perfect for dinner with friends and families. The servers are very kawaii when they sing happy birthday.

Sincerely, Loewe