Tozen Sushi Bar: Premium sushi restaurant in Fairview Vancouver
For my friend’s birthday, we all had dinner at Tozen Sushi Bar, a new Japanese sushi restaurant that opened late last year on West Broadway in the Fairview area of Vancouver. Tozen is a sister restaurant to Tom Sushi (located in downtown Vancouver), but brands themselves on being a more premium/higher-end restaurant.
My partner and I are big fans of sushi so we were super excited to try Tozen and we ordered a bunch of items from their menu because we wanted to try a little bit of everything.
The vibe
We were a table of 6 adults and were seated at the very front of the restaurant next to the host/hostess area. This table was really nice actually, and the booth seating was facing the interior of the restaurant so you didn’t feel like you were being watched from the giant window behind you. The only con is that it can get kind of chilly since this table is near the door.
The interior of Tozen Sushi Bar is pretty spacious. There are black booth seating lining the walls and they have other plush black chairs. I really like the swirl details on the wall and the plating is also quite fancy (your plates kind of look like a flat rock – isn’t this what we all want our dishes to look like?).
Food and drinks review
We are 3 couples so we ordered and split the bill by each couple. I will mostly review the items my partner and I ordered. As always, prices are rounded to the nearest CAD for simplicity.
Tozen city sour 2oz ($16)
For my cocktail, I order the Tozen city sour. This is their take on a bourbon sour with citrus, egg white and red wine.
I liked this cocktail as it was both fruity and a tad on the strong side! Also really liked the gradient of colours – very pretty.
Motoyaki ($9)
For a starter, Kelvin orders the oyster motoyaki, where the oyster gets baked with mayo. Inside a little bowl, they have multiple small oysters baked in that mayo sauce. He liked it but I thought it was overpriced and I usually prefer my motoyaki to feature a large oyster vs. small ones.
Beef yukke ($23)
We did not order this item, but someone at our table ordered the beef yukke, which is actually a Korean version of marinated raw beef (think beef tartare).
Since we didn’t order it, I can’t comment on the taste, but presentation is quite nice.
Corn kakiage ($7) + Chicken karaage ($9)
You can tell we love deep-fried items because we ordered two appetizers that are so similar 😅. We really tried to choose between the two, but ended up just saying fuck it and ordering both.
The corn kakiage is more like a corn fritter whereas the chicken karaage is your classic deep fried chicken thigh. They are both served with the same mayo aioli type sauce.
They are both tasty and the chicken was juicy inside, but I still preferred the corn kakiage over the chicken karaage. I just find it more unique.
Tozen special sashimi ($99)
This sashimi platter is the most expensive item on the menu 💸!
It came on one of the biggest plates I’ve seen and was beautifully plated with 10 types of sashimi – 2 pieces each of akami (red tuna), chutoro (medium fatty tuna), otoro (tuna belly), hirame (flat fish), kanpachi (amberjack), shima aji (striped horse mackerel), salmon belly, hotate (scallop), amaebi (sweet prawn) and saba (mackerel).
Now I know $99 is a hefty price tag, but I actually think this sashimi platter was reasonably priced 🤷🏻♀️. First, all the sashimi in this platter are premium cuts of fish. You don’t see your regular salmon, tuna, octopus, surf clam (I swear nobody likes this one 😫), and those kinds of standard sashimi. This means each piece of sashimi is around $5 and also the scallops wasn’t just 2 pieces (there was 6 topped with ikura/fish eggs!).
I love that they also feature 3 kinds of fatty tuna, even though the whole edible gold thing is just a showy add-on in my opinion. The chutoro was super fatty and delicious – definitely save it for the end!
But aside from the 3 fatty tunas (which is probably everybody’s favourite), I also really liked the scallop, sweet prawn, and the amberjack. I found them to be very fresh!
Premium nigiri set ($56)
If the sashimi platter is too expensive for you, I would recommend getting the premium nigiri set. Our friend ordered and it comes with 10 pieces of sushi. Hers came with sweet prawn, 2 kinds of fatty tuna (akami and chutoro), kanpachi, shima aji, saba, tamago (egg), a negitoro? (I’m guessing some of them 😅) and a really long piece of anago (eel)!
We actually ordered an eel nigiri for ourselves for $9 and split it between 2 people since the piece of eel is so long.
Overall, I think this plate of sushi looks pretty good and for $56 and 10 pieces you are looking at $5.60 per sushi. However, since it is more for 1 person, if 2 people order it, it will be more expensive than the $99 sashimi platter (and you are missing out on more fish since they have a tamago in here 😂).
Tuna bomb ($14)
For rolls, we order the tuna bomb. It sounded interesting because they use crispy rice (Japanese sushi masters in Japan will scratch their heads in confusion) instead of regular sushi rice. It comes with a little bowl of spicy tuna, avocado and black tobiko. You spoon some of this mixture and spread it onto each piece of crispy rice (there are 6 pieces) before you eat it.
I liked this roll because it was kind of fun but it was a tad on the spicy side! I also liked the crunch from the crispy rice underneath.
Negi kanpa hama ($24)
For our last roll, we order the negi kanpa hama roll, also from their signature roll section of the menu. We order this because I saw a lot of people most about this roll on Instagram 😂 but also Kelvin really likes negitoro.
This roll comes with negi hamachi, negi kanpachi, kani stick, avocado and cucumber. I thought the presentation was very appetizing the way they have the chopped pieces of fish in the roll and sprinkled on top. I also thought it was interesting for them to use negi hamachi and kanpachi instead of just negitoro. I wasn’t too sure about the kani stick though (isn’t it imitation crab? 🤨).
The roll was tasty but there was a pretty strong taste of sesame oil throughout each piece. Someone mentioned it kind of reminds them of the Korean kimbab. I wish they would let more of the fish flavours come through instead of this sweet sesame oil overpowering the delicate freshness of the fish.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
After tax and tip, we spent around $270 for all the food we ordered + my cocktail and 2 beers.
This was not a cheap casual sushi place by any means, but we really liked our dinner at Tozen Sushi and thought the quality of all the fish we ordered was excellent and certainly premium. I also think that if we return to Tozen Sushi Bar, we wouldn’t go as ham and order as much as we did this time. We really feel like we ordered everything we wanted to try from their menu.
Things I would order again or highly recommend:
- The $99 sashimi platter if it is within your budget! Great to share with 2 people since it comes in 2 pieces of each fish anyways.
- The premium nigiri set – I would order and just eat this if I was not sharing with anyone.
- The anago/eel sushi by itself if I don’t order the nigiri set.
- Tuna bomb roll
- corn kakiage – I love corn 🌽
Things I would not order again is the negi kanpa hama roll and the oyster mototaki.
Sincerely, Loewe