I’m so excited to be writing this post because 1) I’ve wanted to try Green Leaf Cafe for a while now, and 2) there are so many fun foods to share with you all! Green Leaf Sushi is located along W. Broadway and that location is just too far for me to go to so I was so excited about Green Leaf Cafe opening up by Lougheed Mall.
Green Leaf Cafe interior
Green Leaf Cafe may sound like a vegetarian restaurant but it is actually a Japanese/French/Korean fusion restaurant. Their menu variety of rice and noodle dishes, aburi sushi, appetizers, and desserts. Their restaurant concept is more similar to a bar than your typical Japanese/Korean restaurant.
Green Leafer
To start we decided to try the Green Leaf-er ($19) which was a sampler of their tempura snapper, aburi of the day and sashimi pieces.
The salmon aburi had smoky flavor from the light char on top which made it enjoyable. It was also slightly sweet from the glaze it had on top while the jalapeno slice added a kick. The snapper was battered and fried but because there was a good amount of sauce on top, it didn’t remain very crispy. The sauce on top has slightly sweet and the wasabi sauce balanced everything out. The sashimi was really fresh to the point that it tasted almost sweet. Yum!
Ebi basil aburi
We decided to try this one out because it seemed like a fusion between Japanese and Italian flavors. Unfortunately the basil wasn’t very prevalent and we weren’t able to taste it at all. The cheese on the other hand was the star of the show and added notes of savoriness but hid the lightness of the shrimp. Each piece was topped with a little olive slice.
Linguine Alle Vongole Bianco
I was surprised that there were so many clams in this because usually you order a seafood pasta and there’s barely anything in sight. The pasta didn’t have any clam flavor per say and it was more of a butter and garlic situation. The linguine was cooked al dente and there was a lot of delicious garlic flavor.
Cha shu bowl
This was an intriguing dish and definitely unlike any other chashu bowl I’ve had before. This cha shu was made out of pork belly pieces that was a balance between lean and fatty pieces. The mayo on top added richness and tangy flavor. There was another sauce on top but I’m not really sure what it was made out of but it was really strong in alcohol flavor. I’m not sure if it was because there was alcohol in it or if there was just a lot of mirin (rice wine). I wasn’t a big fan of this sauce because I found it to be quite overpowering. The runny egg on top was a nice touch too.
Kimchi cheese udon
We got this because Brother deer said that it sounded interesting. After getting the cha shu rice bowl and the clam linguine, we were expecting a decent portion for this dish but there wasn’t actually very much in the container. This was one of those dishes where the novelty wears off quick. At first it was fun to stretch the cheese around and mix it but as the dish cooled down, the cheese firmed up and it wasn’t too great texture wise. We thought that there would be a good amount of kimchi in it but unfortunately this was not the case as we couldn’t really find the flavor under all the cheese.
This was SO good for the boomerang shots you love with all the gooey cheese.
Kimchi bacon fried rice
This had so much more kimchi in comparison to the kimchi cheese udon. It was spicy and every bite you had a bunch of kimchi flavor which was what made it so delicious. At first I wasn’t too sure about getting this because I’m not a fan of bacon but the kimchi was so strong that the bacon was hardly noticeable. I’d definitely get this again!
Mushroom risotto souffle
We weren’t planning on getting this at first. But then we kept seeing people ordering so naturally we had to order it too. This was a giant egg white souffle puff on top of a creamy bed of mushroom risotto.
Although the egg white puff looked tremendous on top of everything, there wasn’t much too it and it was purely egg white. I’m not sure how they made it stay so fluffy! It definitely would have taken a lot of egg whites to make. I wish that the souffle portion had more flavor though because it took up so much of the dish but egg whites don’t have any flavor naturally so we ended mixing it in with the risotto in hunt of some flavor.
The risotto itself was soooo creamy and delicious. It was as though they cooked rice in cream of mushroom soup or something. It was rich without being too heavy and the variety of mushrooms in it allowed it to have some different textures. I only wish there was more of it because there wasn’t enough to mix in with the souffle because it was so big in comparison.
Quick bites:
- Lots of fusion style foods
- Good quality eats
- Smaller portions than your usual Japanese joint but worth it!