Rita and I headed to the restaurant at about 8:30 after a nice long afterwork nap, and it was indeed in the same building as the bowling alley, but accessible from the outside just like a normal strip mall restaurant. It was pretty busy inside with lots of people waiting for take out orders but they got cleared out pretty quickly.

We got a seat immediately and a small bowl of edamame beans were presented to us. Free edamame is always a plus!

We decided to order a few items recommended by Steph. She and her family like the Crunch Roll which contains yam and prawn tempura with a tempura batter sprinkled on the top along with drizzled teriyaki sauce. The soft yam and prawn were contrasted with the crunch of the tempura crumbs (not panko btw). Nice dish. Along with the Crunch Roll we also ordered a chopped scallop and avocado roll. It was good but nothing special so I didn’t bother taking a picture of it.

The Spicy Salmon Sashimi, on the other hand, made me sit up and take notice. Normally when you order salmon from a sushi restaurant, you get Atlantic salmon which is light pink, with white fat strips. I actually like Atlantic salmon, unlike many people, but I Love Sushi serves Sockeye salmon which I love. Now normally if you can order Sockeye salmon, it is listed as an option on the menu but I Love Sushi doesn’t specify what type of salmon it serves which usually means Atlantic.

In this case, assumptions make an ass out of you and me…or however the saying goes. When I asked the server if the salmon was sockeye, she apologized that they only serve sockeye. Who apologizes for serving a high grade of fish?!

One order of sashimi contains 15 pieces and as you can see, it’s a generous serving for the $12. It also comes with spicy sauce which I asked for to be on the side. There’s a dark red sauce which reminded me of a sweetened sriracha sauce, and a spicy mayo. Both sauces were very spicy…just how I like it.

I Love Sushi was a pleasant surprise, especially since it’s housed in a bowling alley. Highly recommended if you’re out in Coquitlam.

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Here is our nephew with the first red pocket we’ve given out.

Here is our niece being as cute as ever.

This is what we all call Chinese Cream Soda. It’s different from the pink cream soda that is sold in most stores. I’m not sure that it’s actually only a Chinese thing since it’s Schweppes, but it definitely has a different flavour, and it only seems to be sold in Chinese supermarkets like T&T. It’s hard not to get addicted to the stuff.

These are surf clams which cook very quickly in the hot pot we ate. You pretty much only have to blanche them before they’re ready to eat. It’s the same kind of clam that you get in sushi as Hokkigai.

The family enjoying the spread.

The cake hilariously can be translated as “Peace coming in and out”.

As usual, we couldn’t leave well enough along and we ordered extra kimchi and eggs. Whenever I eat at ramen places here in the Lower Mainland, I always compare it to one particular restaurant on the Dotombori in Osaka. Pretty much you could only order pork romen with the only choice being one, or two pieces of cha-so. They had these huge bowls of chopped garlic and kimchi that you could add at will. I’m salivating just remembering that place. For those of you who find yourself in Osaka and want to find the restaurant, it has a gigantic fibreglass dragon above it; you can’t miss it. They also have a sister restaurant a few blocks down which also shares the same bench-only+orange interior.

One tip about eating chicken ramen, or chicken pho, or really any type of soup that includes pieces of chicken, is to remove the chicken from the soup and place it in a separate bowl as soon as it is brought to you. If you leave your chicken in the soup, it will overcook and get stringy.

Benkei was pretty good, but I’m still searching for that je-ne-sais-quoi that the ramen stand in Osaka had. Guess we’ll have to go back!

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We definitely have our usual haunts around the Metrotown area but we thought we’d try some place new even if we wouldn’t be able to come back often. So on our way to Sushi Oyama, we decided on a whim to stop by and check it out.

The place was about half full and it seemed that everyone inside was a regular; that’s a good sign. After taking a look at the menu, we ordered what we took to be specialities of the restaurant. We tried a very spicy chilli chicken, and a sliced green pepper and tofu dish.

The chicken was very tender, with a good flavour. It was very spicy, but not so much that it masked the flavour of the red chillies. As is the Chinese style, the chicken was tenderized by smashing the meat. On the one hand, this consistently provides a tender uniform texture, but on the other hand lends itself to unexpected shards of bone. If you aren’t used to meat prepared in this fashion, it can be surprising, but I expected it so I was careful to pick out the small bone pieces.

The second dish we ordered was diced green chillies on tofu. While the chicken dish we had was spicy enough to cause us to sweat, this dish was just ridiculous. I was practically weaned on spicy food, and I love habanero peppers, but this was painfully spicy. The peppers were sliced placed on the tofu, seeds and all, and then steamed. All I could do was scrape as many seeds away as I could, and eat the flesh of the pepper and tofu, but eventually I had to give up.

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Since we wanted to beat the dinner rush, we headed to Trattoria right after work arriving shortly after 5. It was already pretty full and there was a bit of a line but I doubt we waited more than 5 minutes before we were seated.

The ambience was nice and friendly, and the service was excellent. I liked the overall design and the thought that went into putting the restaurant together. I thought the place-mats which had little facts on them were pretty neat.

First to come out was a mozzarella sampler. We both liked the one that appears in the left of the picture.

Shortly after, along with our entrees, came the grilled romaine hearts in a gorgonzola sauce. We loved these as the lettuce was still crispy but had a perfect amount of seasalt and oil to complement the gorgonzola cheese.

We ordered two seafood pastas. One with prawns and one with clams. Both were delicious, not too salty (as is the case with pasta at many restaurants), and contained generous portions of seafood. The prawns were gigantic! They were almost like small lobsters.

We ordered way too much food and didn’t have room for dessert, and I would have liked to stayed and sit for a bit but we needed to get to the museum.

The Museum of Anthropology is located at UBC near the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. It is in a beautiful location hidden amongst the trees. The Inuit art exhibit we came to see was very interesting, especially since the printmakers had studied the techniques of Japanese print masters, and in fact imported their washi paper from traditional Japanese artisans.

The rest of the museum is jam packed full of history and artifacts. There is so much to see that much of the collection is in huge drawers under glass display cases that you can pull out and look at. Of course, being a museum with a very extensive First Nations collection, they have a very impressive set of totem poles.

In the end, while we got to see the Inuit print exhibit, we missed out on a lot of the museum that we wanted to see. It’s a fascinating place, and I’m not sure why I had never been, especially since the building I had a lot of my classes in was about 50 feet away. We’ll definitely have to be back to see the rest.

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Hey everyone, I’m looking to do some sound design or soundtrack work. I want to expand my portfolio and modernize it a bit. So if you’re an animator, a game developer, or have a short film/video you need scored, I would love to partner with you on your project. If you aren’t either of those but know of a project that might need someone like me, I’d appreciate the reference too! You can contact me in the comments or hit me up by email which is listed on the home page at the top right (I’m not going to list it here so bots don’t scrape it). Let me know a little about your project, what you plan to do with it, and a little bit about stuff you’ve done before. Thanks!