The wasabi is perfection and so are some of the other ingredients, but they have to fight their way past the sauces
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Chef Akira Omura and Sakura Miyajima look over some of the imaginative sushi dishes at the new Bliss Asian Bistro beside Coal Harbour. Photograph by : Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun
A black SUV drives up to the restaurant. The driver, like a paparazzo hound dog, is pointing a video camera with one hand. He’s chasing down a beauty shot of Coal Harbour.
It tells you something about the view outside of Bliss Asian Bistro. The name fits and it seems there’s no let-up in the boomlet of Asian-style restaurants. Bliss is run by Sy Baek, who also runs Deep Cove Osaka Sushi. With Bliss, he’s more right-brain, with imaginative food, grounded in Japanese cuisine with hits of Korea.
I needed help deciphering parts of the menu. A section called “Dragons” offers a potpourri of bite-sized inventions. Under “Hot,” you’ll find entree-style dishes lacking in description. Under “Noodle,” there was pad Thai and the other was simply called “Chinese.” It highlights the importance of menu-writing for selling the food.
Thankfully, our server was gracious and helpful. (Baek says this server, Sakura, went out to restaurants on her own to learn the nuances of fine service. She shines.)
The great thing about the menu, though, is that the food is 99-per-cent organic. The fish is wild, much of it flown from Japan a couple times a week. I tasted what he called “white tuna” for the first time. It was part of a sashimi combo and was quite surprised its contrast from ahi or other tunas. It’s buttery and has a cooked texture, almost like processed turkey meat. And yet, it’s raw.
Aek has also eliminated sugar from his menu, subbing organic honey for the sweet background in many Japanese dishes. (Baek isn’t the chef in the kitchen. He creates the menu and shows the chefs how to make the dishes.)
And the other qualitative difference is the wasabi — it’s the real thing which he imports from Japan for $100 an ounce. It’s worth coming here just to find out what real wasabi is about.
There’s a line-up of some 16 New Wave maki rolls, a bandwagon many sushi chefs have jumped onto. These maki rolls bulge with fillings that would astonish the Japanese and they have catchy names like Kamikaze (with duck or steak, sweet potato, carrots, lettuce); Baked Alaska (smoked salmon, salmon, crab, avocado, mozzarella, Cheddar cheeses); Black Widow (soft shell crab, avocado, cucumber, tobiko, crab, unagi, red pepper) and so on.
While I like innovation and moving on from tradition, I like some rules — like sticking to seafood and veggies when it comes to sushi and maintaining a clean, refreshing taste. Meat and cheese make a poor match with vinegared sushi rice. Fruit, like mango and papaya, I can accept. These jumbo maki rolls often fall apart and sometimes they’re drizzled with heavy, teriyaki-like sauces which to me, is like having dessert wine with salad. It detracts from delicate and bright flavours.
At Bliss, the flavours were bright, the ingredients fresh and some of the ideas clever, but not the Kamikaze Maki, mentioned above, which was drizzled with a tastebud-destroying hot sauce.
The Black Widow maki stuck to seafood and cleverly evoked an arachnid with the tentacles of deep-fried soft-shelled crab and the black nori wrapped around the girth of the roll.
I tried a couple of the “Dragons.” The Dragon Pouch looked like a cute little baby dragon with a tempura prawn sticking out like a head from inari sushi; thin slices of avocado covered the top.
Rib-eye bulgogi (the “b” sound should be somewhere between a b and a p, I’m told) was a tasty complete meal with perks like white asparagus amongst a variety of veggies and fresh green salad.
Wines are chosen for Asian cuisine but there’s a lot going on with some of the dishes and Baek steers diners towards the premium sakes, which matches the food well. There are about 30 to choose from and some are infused with fruit (strawberries and pears).
Desserts are worth keeping an eye on with the pastry chef from the Four Seasons Hotel moonlighting for him.
Baek could rethink the music which puts one into elevator-riding mood — something that accents the beauty outside the glass walls.
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BLISS ASIAN BISTRO
Overall: 3 1/2
Food: 3 1/2
Ambience: 4
Service: 4
Price: $$
550 Denman St., 604-662-3044. Open for dinner only until May when it will also be open for lunch.
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
