Eating Lonsdale

HaRu Sushi 2006-05-20

I love sushi.

I've been a hard core fan of sushi since Tojo was still running the Jinya on Broadway (long before he opened his world famous Tojo's up the street). North Vancouver has a lot of sushi bars. In fact it seems like there's a sushi bar on every corner! Our personal favourite that we've found close to home is Yama Sushi in Lynn Valley.

Anyway, being as I like to think I know good sushi and love to try new places I was somewhat excited about the opportunity to try a new sushi bar close to home. I've been told that most sushi bars in the area are run by Chinese and Koreans, not Japanese, and that the best ones are run by Japanese. HaRu is one of the few Japanese run sushi bars. Unfortunately my experience there has left me seriously doubting the "Japanese sushi bars are the best" theory. I'll take Oscar's sushi (at Yama, who happens to be Chinese) any day!

The trip was not a complete disaster. On this visit Kristin joined us (since she happened to be available). She was not exactly in the mood for sushi so she ordered one of the bento boxes. It looked good and she seemed to enjoy it. Tristan, a sushi veteran now, had his standard six pieces of ebi and four pieces of sake with a bowl of edamame. The edamame was bland and over cooked. The sake (salmon) that I tried was limp and rather tasteless. They did not have quail egg for my tobiko, the saba was too fishy tasting with a tough skin and I didn't even go near the uni (after all, it is May...).

The service was sketchy at best and the one waitress, who appeared overly-harried for a small crowd, managed to drop a whole plate full of dishes on the floor and scare the crap out of the whole place.

Given the sheer number of sushi restaurants in town I see no reason to come back to HaRu and will be surprised if they stay in business much longer.

LERS Score: 1 (No Way)

posted by Jay MacDonald @ 9:26 p.m.