Hapa Izakaya is located in the heart of Yaletown. They serve an assortment of Japanese tapas and a few main dishes as well. Hapa Izakaya is great for group gatherings but you need to make sure everyone arrives on time to keep your table.
Midori salad
I knew I wanted to get the Midori salad because we were going to have some pretty heavy menu items later on. The two of us aren’t fans of heavy salad dressing. We were pleasantly surprised to see that this salad had a nice light citrus vinaigrette style dressing on top. However, if you’re a fan of dressing, I think you’ll have to ask for a bit more.
Beef tataki
I rarely ever eat red meat because I’m just not a fan of it but for some reason I’ve been having these crazy cravings for it lately (probably because I’m low on iron) so we decided to get an order of Beef Tataki. We weren’t huge fans of this dish because we felt that the sirachi-like hot sauce on top of the beef slices over took the whole plate. We didn’t really taste much of the beef through the sauce 🙁
Raw oysters
Grayson rarely ever gets raw oysters because I don’t like them so he took the opportunity to get some today. He thought that they weren’t bad but he’s had better. He asked me a couple of times if I wanted the other one but I said no because he also mentioned that there was a really ocean-y aftertaste. So I just admired the cute presentation of them in the yellow bucket while he enjoyed himself.
Hanabi roll
I don’t think we’ve tried the sushi rolls at Hapa Izakaya before so we decided to get the Hanabi Roll. The roll was filled with spicy tuna and topped with tempura bits. It was also torched in front of us at the table by our server when she brought it over to us.
For a second we were really confused because we were thinking “why are you setting our sushi on fire?!?” but then we realized that it was just for aesthetic appeal. Grayson felt like the rolls were pretty decent but I wasn’t too impressed with it because I’ve had way better spicy tuna rolls in the past.
Miso Pork Ishiyaki
Last up we got the Miso Pork Ishiyaki because we had it the last time we were at Hapa and we really liked it. The meat was tender and the rice was packed with flavour. Plus, the rice had a crust on it which made parts of it crunchy and chewy!
