Sherman's Food Adventures: Dundarave Sushi

Dundarave Sushi

Finding fairly affordable eats in Vancouver is not necessarily a tough thing to do, especially with the large selection of Asian restaurants.  However, find cheap eats in West Vancouver is akin to finding cheap parking in Downtown Vancouver.  But if one looks hard enough, like a commercial zone, you might find something that doesn't empty your wallet.  Mijune taught me that as she cannot stand to pay for parking...  Anyways, we figured that Dundarave Sushi could be that "inexpensive meal" we were looking for while out in West Van one night. 

We started with a simple Wakame Salad which my daughter practically devoured herself.  My son looked at it and gave a face of disdain...  There is no doubt who has my genes...  Nothing much to say about it other than it was crunchy and nicely acidic.  Next up was the House Roll and Smoked Salmon Box Sushi.  Relatively tightly constructed, the house roll was okay with fresh avocado and equally fresh salmon.  We found the rice quite mild and a touch sticky, yet fine nonetheless.  As for the pressed sushi, it wasn't too dense while the amount of smoked salmon on top could've been more substantial.

Next, we had the Assorted Sashimi consisting of baby scallops, tai, salmon, tako, tuna and hokkigai.  Let me rephrase that, everyone but my son had the sashimi...  Anyways, I liked how the pieces were not too thick while not too thin either.  Nothing was amiss and even the octopus tentacles were texturally on point.  Something that my son did eat was the Tempura Udon.  For me, the soup was a complete fail as it tasted predominantly of soy sauce.  No dashi here.  Noodles were okay though.  As for the tempura, it was pretty greasy where some pieces still dripped with oil.  Hence, the yam and sweet potato was slimy.  On the positive side, the batter was not too heavy.

Adding more carbs, we got the Chicken Katsu Don as well.  The large piece of katsu was okay with moist and well-seasoned meat.  However, the exterior was drenched in an overabundance of sauce which made everything too sweet.  Even when combined with the chewy rice, it was still too powerful.  Lastly, we had the Chicken Karaage which was not very good.  It was either fried too long or re-fried as the texture was more like jerky than chicken meat.  It was well-seasoned though with a slight pepperiness.  Overall, we found the food a bit hit and miss at Dundarave Sushi.  Definitely not the most authentic experience, but okay if one wanted a bite to eat that didn't cost an arm and a leg.

The Good:
- Inexpensive
- Decent portions
- Despite what others have said, we got good service

The Bad:
- Hit and miss food
- Not a whole lot of seating

Dundarave Sushi on Urbanspoon

4 comments:

LotusRapper said...

Sorry to digress from your cheap eats quest in W.Van ..... just thinking about sushi + W.Van in general. Isn't there a really high-end sushi resto out there ? Forget their name.

LotusRapper said...

Found it ... Zen Sushi:

http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/14/182015/restaurant/Vancouver/Zen-Japanese-Restaurant-West-Vancouver

Sherman Chan said...

@LR That's on deck. I have a Groupon for the place...

LotusRapper said...

Even with a Groupon you'll probably come out of there missing an arm and leg. And still be famished. Read the blog reviews .... yikes ! Even Mijune didn't spare many kind words for them (Zen)

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