Shibuya Izakaya

One of my fondest memories of Shibuya was when I came here on a Wednesday afternoon with a bunch of girl friends and by the end of the night we somehow ended up with 15 empty sake bottles on the table. How did they get there? I dunno. Hehe... :)

I love the food at Shibuya and the staff is very attentive, sometimes a little too attentive but it comes from a good place. I usually order the same dishes whenever I eat here: a miso soup, seaweed salad, a dozen oysters, beef tataki (THE BEST I'VE EVER HAD), salmon sashimi and 1 special roll. Dinner for 2 :)

Salmon Sashimi

Miso Soup

Seaweed Salad

I LOOOOOVE the oysters and beef tataki here. They serve their oysters with a ponzu sauce which is actually the same sauce they put on their tataki -- maybe I just love ponzu sauce. Hehe... The oysters are always fresh and the beef tataki is paper thin so you don't get too much of the raw beef flavour. The key is thin slices, I hate when I order beef tataki and it ends up being too thick.

$1.25 Oysters Mon-Thurs

Beef Tataki

Other notable dishes are the miso black cod, grilled squid, and these delicious curry potato croquette which I'm sure have a proper name that I can't remember at the moment.

On most occasions, when there's only the two of us, we don't order any sushi because I'm always too full from all the other dishes (there's just to many tasty ones to try!) but always try to get at least 1 roll. Recently, they have started doing specialty rolls which have changed every time I go there and they are definitely worth trying -- today, I tried the crispy cajun roll which actually turned out to be really good!

Special Roll

Crispy Cajun Roll

All in all, Shibuya is one of my favourite izakaya restaurants the food is tasty, the service is great, and they always play good music. Throwing a bottle of sake and you have yourself the perfect date night. :)

Sukiyaki at Misai

When I first stumbled upon Misai years ago, it was right after I came back from a trip to Japan where I discovered Japanese hot pot aka Sukiyaki!!  I got back to Calgary and couldn't stop thinking about this delicious dish and wondered if I would ever be able to have it again. I searched high and low, east and west and finally found Misai -- all-you-can-eat Sukiyaki! Disclaimer: Since then they no longer offer the all-you-can-eat option but the serving they have is more than enough for a 2 person date.

So years passed by and very recently I decided to stop by Misai once again for that delicious Japanese hot pot. Just like the first time, the server cooked the meal at our table: first he melted some butter in the pan then sautéed some onions and veggies and poured the soy sauce broth into the pan. We waited for the soup to boil and then we added some thinly sliced beef and, voila! yummy in my tummy!

Soup base cooked at the table

Check out the marble on this beef

More goodies for the pot

The sukiyaki experience this time was not as good as before. Don't get me wrong, it was still delicious but it was different. As I had mentioned, it was no longer all-you-can-eat beef but instead they offer you other things to put into the pot. I like the traditional beef and cabbage combo but now you can add tofu, radish, squash and spinach -- more of the Chinese hot pot style. This is probably because the management has shifted since I first discovered this place.

We've tried some other items on the menu but I'm not a fan of their other dishes, I only go here for the hot pot dish. So if you are looking for good sushi I would recommend another place.