Gyo-O Japanese restaurant

Gyo-O is one of my favourite restaurants in Vancouver…or rather Richmond. We rarely come all the way out to Richmond but we had to run some errands so I got to have my Gyo-O craving satisfied 🙂

I absolutely adore the interior of Gyo-O because it makes me feel as though I’ve been transported to a little hole in the wall restaurant in Japan! The only downside of this is of course, you can’t really host large parties there and wait times are long during peak hours.

Gyo-O menu

Unlike most Japanese restaurants out there, Gyo-O doesn’t serve sushi. Rather, it chooses to focus on traditional appetizers, rice (dons), and noodle (ramen, udon) dishes.

Seafood salad don

Even though the two of us should try something new, we always find ourselves going back to the first dishes we ever tried here. But I decided to switch it up and got the mini seafood salad don instead of my usual spicy sashimi udon.

The junior size allowed me to be just full enough to be satisfied but still have room for dessert (: I liked that there was loads of spinach greens but there really could of been more fresh seafood in there! But then again, there is never enough seafood!

Seafood don

Grayson didn’t stray from his usual and got the regular seafood don because he just adores it too much. He’s been saying that he wanted to try the udon here for a while now but never gets around to it because “the regular seafood don already has everything I want on it so why would I stray from perfection?” I guess he has a point there…

On another visit…

Ankake udon

I decided to try something new instead of my spicy sashimi cold udon and got the ankake udon instead. Typically cold udon comes with a soy based broth that you dip your noodles into before eating it but this version came with a thick viscous sweet and salty sauce instead. It was almost as though I was pouring gravy over my udon because it was just as delicious as enjoying a bowl of mashed potatoes with gravy on top.

The udon was cold but when the hot roux hit it, it warmed it up to the perfect temperature and to top it all off, you can never go wrong with an onsen tamago (soft boiled egg)!

Seafood ramen

Mother deer decided to get the seafood ramen which came with clams and squid. She said the ramen was perfectly chewy and the broth had lots of flavor. She got the wakame seaweed one last time and preferred this one although she said it could of had a bit more seafood in it.

Tuna carpaccio

We also decided to try the tuna carpaccio because we couldn’t leave a Japanese restaurant without having raw fish. It came with a ponzu citrus sauce on top along with raw white and green onions. The onion gave it a nice pop of freshness and the ponzu brightened everything up. Even old bean who isn’t a huge fan of sashimi said it tasted really fresh!

Summary