VANCOUVER: Zakkushi - Charcoal Grill Diner

Haven't written a recent review for a while and today, midweek is a good day to do so. Zakkushi - Charcoal Grill Diner. Original location: Denman and Robson Street, directly beside Dairy Queen. New restaurant: West 4th and Burrard. Located on your right hand side, the entrance looks like a big giant wooden wall, be careful, you might miss it if you're not paying attention.

The ambiance of this restaurant is traditional with nice seating arrangements, this (above) as the feature dining table, situated right in front of the restaurant.

Zakkushi has a similar flair compared with Guu, serving Japanese Tapa-style dishes. With Zakkushi, most of their dishes are on grilled on skewers. This seems to be the trend with Japanese food these days, they're opening so rapidly that it's hard to decide WHICH one to go to, whereas before, there was only one or two to choose from. This time at Zakkushi, I didn't select alot of the dishes, rather, I let my friend choose what he wanted to try. Please read my reviews below.

The first dish we tried was the Tako-Wasa. What this dish simply is, is fresh octopus with a light wasabi dressing. It tasted decent, although the wasabi flavor wasn't as strong as it tastes in Japan, most probably toned down for western palates. Goes perfectly with a bottle of Asahi.
This one is the Zuke Maguro Sashimi. Although the tuna was very fresh, the sauce did not have that extra kick to it. I prefer the one they serve at Guu or Hapa Izakaya.
Daikon Salad. This was bad. It was nothing I expected from a Daikon Salad. The way Zakkushi on Denman prepares this is totally different from the one on West 4th (or at least since the last time I was there). The one I remembered from West 4th, the daikon(radishes) were chopped up into strands, there was a fried lotus on top. I preferred that one much more, allowing the dressing to drizzle to every strand of daikon. This one at Denman however, were sliced into humongous pieces, making it no longer bite-sized and more difficult to eat with chopsticks, the worse part was that the dressing didn't get to alot of the daikon, making it feel like I was a rabbit gnawing on a piece of tasteless vegetable.


Roasted Black Cod with Black Pepper Sauce. This on the other hand was mouth-watering. (The fried lotus on top was what I was talking about in the salad) Now we all know that the flavor for black cod is rather bland, but paired with the black pepper sauce, it really brought the taste to life. The cod was grilled perfectly, as usual, very tender, and the fried lotus on top added a little texture to the fish, finished off with an excellent presentation.

Grilled Ika. I think Zakkushi should just stay with grilled foods and nothing else. This is what they are good at and they should NOT be trying the other stuff. The Grilled Ika was excellent.

Cheese Mochi Maki. This has always been a favorite dish of mine at Zakkushi. This is grilled sticky riche with Cheese on top. The sticky rice has a crispy texture on the inside, with warm gooey goodness on the inside, topped with melted cheese. Yummy!

And finally, Yakitori don. I didn't have a chance to try this as I was already rolling off my seat from being too full, but it sure looks good, doesn't it?