Japanese Bistro Hatzu

Japanese Bistro Hatzu is a Japanese fusion restaurant located in the heart of Davie village in downtown Vancouver. It’s only open 5pm to late which caters to the after work crowd and the eclectic lifestyles of those living in the neighbourhood.

Grayson and I have been here before when the location was previously known as Sushi Bella. It has since been renovated and uphauled on the inside. I thought the menu items were quite similar to the ones on the Sushi Bella menu.

Sesame tuna tataki

★★★★

We got the sesame tuna tataki ($11) to start. The seared tuna was supposed to be topped with avocado mousse and mango sauce. I was excited about that but unfortunately we couldn’t really find any of that on the plate. It tasted more of soy and yuzu sauce than anything but it was delicious so we didn’t really care. The tuna slices were a good size and soaked up enough of the sauce for it to be flavorful. We enjoyed it best when eaten with a slice of the garlic chips on top.

Hot stone bowl

★★★

Next up was the hot stone bowl ($12) which was similar to a Korean bibimbap because it had beef sirloin steak, egg, and shiitake mushrooms in it. We enjoyed mixing it around and waited for the rice to crisp up from being on the hot edges of the pot. Unfortunately the rice didn’t crisp up because it was too wet from the sauce in the rice. While we enjoyed the idea of the hot stone bowl, the sauce was too sweet and it made it taste like more of a sweet dish than a savory one.

Talk about traditional roll

★★

We couldn’t leave without trying some of their sushi so we got the talk about traditional roll ($10). Neither of us were especially impressed with this roll because it lacked flavor. The rice wasn’t seasoned so it didn’t have the signature taste of traditional sushi rice, and the sesame oil on the outside of the seaweed was just strange. The roll also had slices of green onions on the inside but it wasn’t wrapped well enough to hold together so they kept falling out of the roll. This roll was not with the $10 and we’re skeptical about trying any of their other rolls especially since their rolls were between $10-13.

Sushi pizza

★★★

Originally we were going to get dessert but they were out of everything so we opted to go for an appetizer to end off our meal instead. We went with the sushi pizza because it’s always interesting to see how different restaurant makes theirs.

Japanese bistro hatzu makes theirs by frying a square of rice to make up the pizza base. It was then topped with tuna, salmon, masago and arugula. Then, everything was covered in sweet okonomiyaki sauce and mango sauce. I wasn’t a huge fan of this dish because it was quite difficult to eat but it was something that I enjoyed trying for the first time.

Quick bites:

1. Lots of Japanese fusion items on the menu but a lot of them were also unavailable
2. They have cool tea-infused cocktails that sound interesting
3. Nice ambiance