Some of the freshest fare in the Royal City draws both dine-in and takeout customers
Alfie Lau
Sun
Tora Sushi owner Glen Obara presents his Chicken Bento Box. Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
Amidst the Queensborough Landing shopping mall is a sushi restaurant that not only serves an underserved community, it’s drawing customers from all over the Lower Mainland.
Tora Sushi, opened by owners Shannon and Glen Obara in December 2006, is the culmination of a dream. The couple wanted to start their own business and scouted out the Queensborough location as ideal because of the lack of competition and the ability to draw from both New Westminster and Richmond.
Glen chose the Tora name, which means tiger in Japanese, because he was born in the year of the tiger.
“The first couple months have really been wonderful,” Glen said. “It’s really exceeded our expectations with how many customers keep coming back. It’s been phenomenal.”
The couple weren’t exactly resting on any laurels, as prior to opening Tora Sushi, Glen worked for two decades as a prosthetics technician while Shannon continues to be a stockbroker in downtown Vancouver. Glen is training to be a sushi chef and in the meantime relies on three expert sushi chefs, Andy Chen, Koji Tanaka and Susumu Machida, to provide some of the freshest sushi in the Royal City.
One recent weeknight, the place was all hustle and bustle during its evening rush, with both dine-in and takeout diners keeping Glen and staff very busy.
We got the last table and decided to go with a mix of hot and cold foods.
Starting with the hot dishes, we went with the chicken yakitori, unagi (barbecue eel) rice bowl and miso soup.
For sushi, we went with the deluxe 10-piece sashimi, which included tuna, sockeye salmon, snapper, surf clam and scallops, along with single nigiri portions of salmon roe (ikura), tuna belly (toro), roe (tobiko) and surf clam (hokkigai) and the spider roll, which contained deep-fried soft-shell crab.
My gourmet friend loved her roe, as she had also hoped to have herring roe (kazunoko) — Obara tries to fulfill special requests as long as the food is in season — and I almost had to fight her off for the sockeye salmon sashimi.
She found the unagi a bit overdone and commented that the miso soup needed a bit more punch but her attention was clearly focused on the sushi and sashimi.
I can’t ever get enough of the sockeye salmon and tuna sashimi, but found room for the yakitori, a flavourful and juicy chicken breast nicely marinated.
The spider roll went down smoothly although I probably smothered it in too much soya sauce.
As for the other sashimi servings, the scallops were so good I contemplated ordering more while the hokkigai was a bit too rubbery for my liking. The snapper was fine, but paled in comparison to the tuna and salmon.
We finished off our meal by sharing some French vanilla ice cream, our second choice because they had run out of mango.
The Obaras plan to add some summery twists to their menu when the good weather comes, as they want to incorporate mango and pineapple flavours into their various rolls. And with patio seating adjacent to Starbucks, customers will be able to enjoy their food outside.
‘The best thing about this job is I’m meeting so many customers who have given us positive feedback,” Glen said later in a telephone interview. “This really has been a lot of fun.”
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TORA SUSHI
Unit K-120 — 805 Boyd St. in the Queensborough Landing shopping centre, 604-526-8672
Open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday.
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone.
‘Undeserved Communiuty’ ?? What exactly does that mean? You obviously have no idea about this community, what it has acheived and what it stands for. Japanese food is part of Queensborough’s heritage.
Many of us are regulars at Tora.
Its says under-served not undeserved