Dosanko Japanese – Dineout Vancouver 2018

Hi Friends! Dosanko Japanese is my THIRD round of Dine Out Vancouver this year! This year I’ve already been to Max’s and The Park already and I have two more scheduled over the next week! We chose Dosanko Japanese restaurant because Grayson and I have been hunting for teishoku restaurants lately. The only ones we know of so far are Hi Genki and Oka San.

Dosanko Japanese interior

Although the neighbourhood around the restaurant is quite hidden and isn’t in the greatest area, you end up forgetting all of that when you step into the restaurant.

There were twinkly ceiling lights all over the rafters and it was absolutely gorgeous! Everything was very woodsy and they had a large wine cabinet that stood out against everything.

Menu

We were promptly seated upon entering the restaurant and were given two menus. The original menu and the Dineout one.

From what we could see from the regular menu, the Dineout menu was quite the deal because it was $20 and most of their mains were already around $18. So for an extra $2 you get an appetizer and a dessert? Yes please.

Aki salad

★★

It had spinach, various seeds, beets and carrots. Some of the beets were raw and some were cooked which was nice texturally. The seeds were crunchier than I thought they were be since the quinoa wasn’t fully cooked through. We got this 40 mins after we ordered. We were starving by this point and the restaurant wasn’t even busy!

Cauliflower and squash doria

★★★

This was a rice gratin which is basically rice with baked cheese on top. It had broccoli instead of cauliflower and had kabocha squash in it too. I don’t think there was enough vegetables in it though because a majority of the time I was basically eating straight rice with cheese on it. Not that I’m complaining because it had a good baked char and was great but the ratio was off. It wasn’t very big of a portion of food either. Meaning, if this was $18 on it’s own I’d never order it.

Niku-jiga

★★★

This was a stewed pork belly on top of rice. The rice to stew ratio was 2:1 so…it wasn’t great either. This was really disappointing too in terms of portions. Grayson said he wouldn’t be full if we didn’t have dessert after this. We also waited 30 mins between this and the first salad course.

Japanese rare cheesecake

★★★★

Okay time for dessert. We decided to get two different ones to share. We wanted to try the Japanese rare cheesecake because its not something you can get easily in Vancouver. It wasn’t what we expected though because instead of sitting on a plate, it came in a glass. The cheesecake was a rich and smooth cream with a light cream cheese flavor. It was definitely nothing like the ones I’ve tried before or the ones at Uncle Tetsu. We liked the orange jelly they put on it though since it helped cut some of the richness of the cheesecake.

Amazake rice pudding

★★★

The other dessert we got was the amazake rice pudding. This was MUCH sweeter than the rare cheesecake. The warm rice pudding was very creamy and the ice cream added a nice contrast of temperature against it. We liked that they used red beans instead of red bean paste because the dessert was already quite sweet. It was really hard to finish this one because it was so sweet despite how good it was.

So to recap…compared to the other dineouts I went to this year, the portion here was much smaller than we expected it to be. We liked what they had on their regular menu a lot because they seemed to have some pretty tasty items on there but at the price point it is at, it makes us rethink returning.

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