Ken Oda rebounds from a devastating experience by opening a new Japanese restaurant filled with good cheer and jazz
Sun
Three years ago, Ken Oda opened his first restaurant and he was content. So, too, were his customers. Then disaster, about a year after Dan Japanese Restaurant opened.
“Very suspicious,” he says, of what occurred, “but I guess I don’t know.”
Fire, which started outside, ripped through the restaurant, and suddenly he had no restaurant while the landlord sorted things out. You could call it a cruel irony that ‘dan’ means ‘warm’ in Japanese.
The wait would eventually stretch to 18 months so he and his wife Tomoko returned to their native Japan to work and wait it out. He cooked at a couple of restaurants and one happened to be an Italian place. Not surprising, then, that Italian ways occasionally tip-toes into his dishes.
The udon with clam sauce on the specials list one evening, for instance, was like a lost-in-translation linguine vongole. Come to think of it, Oda looks a little like a Japanese Todd Bertuzzi.
The clam udon was delicious, but mostly, Oda sticks to Japanese tradition, with a tweak here and there. Most dishes are well under $10 and arrive on Japanese pottery dishes.
The small selection of sushi features fresh seafood and good rice. He’s fussy enough to prefer imported Japanese seafood to some West Coast versions. Japanese octopus, he says, is completely different from local, and he prefers it for his sushi.
The sashimi plate (a special one evening for $24) gets a reluctant nod — the tuna was beautiful, as was the spot prawn and flounder, but the salmon was slightly mushy, as if it were improperly frozen previously.
Speaking of fire, I was surprised at the blazing hot chawanmushi, which scorched my mouth but the texture remained soft and delicate — amazingly. Agedashi was gently handled, harmonizing fragile flavours.
I wasn’t enthralled when he wandered off course with a tempura dish — the Dan kakiage. Chopped scallops, prawns and vegetables were balled up into a too-dense tempura. The beauty of tempura is the delicate shattering of the outside batter to get to a simple, single ingredient inside.
He flirts with disaster with the Dan spring roll, mixing tuna, salmon, Japanese basil and brie cheese (of all things) for the filling but he pulls it off. The brie turns liquidy, dissociating itself from cheese.
I had a duhhh moment over the Sansho steak. The menu said “grilled beef steak with Japanese pepper corn” with a space between the pepper and corn. Ahh, peppercorn, I realize when it arrives. Not pepper and corn. The peppercorn sauce was quite interesting, and I mean that in a good way.
Dan is a friendly place, filled with good cheer and jazz. The entry area, though, needs decluttering. The newspaper fronts displayed there might have meaning but they do nothing for first impressions.
The rest of the space is clean and modern and brand-spanking new. Long-lost customers are returning and he’s happy again.
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DAN JAPANESE RESTAURANT
Overall: 3 1/2
Food: 3 1/2
Ambience: 3 1/2
Service: 3 1/2
Price $/$$
2511 West Broadway. 604-677-6930. Open 7 nights a week, 5 to 10:30 p.m.
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
