Minami

We visited Minami last month and had a unexpected 3 hour long dinner at the restaurant’s patio. Wow, looking at my pictures, we ate a lot of food!

We started the meal with Aburi Carpaccio, Shiso Mojito Watermelon and Citrus Cured Scallops, and Chilled King Crab and Shrimp Cha-Soba; all are chilled dishes and all are beautifully plated.

The aburi (beef) carpaccio was served with citrusy ponzu sauce, together with the deep fried lotus root chip and watercress, it’s a great appetizer. The king crab and shrimp soba was tossed with very fresh seafood and fresh tomatoes, but unfortunately I found this dish to be a bit bland. The watermelon & scallop appetizer is a great one to get for those who enjoys shiso and scallop sashimi.

Moving onto warmer dishes, we ordered the Spicy Pork Gyoza and the Yasai Maki Chicken. The gyozas were really nice with vinegary sauce and bits of deep fried pork belly. Each of them had a decent amount of fillings, the dumpling wrapper was very thin but still held it’s shape.  The Yasai Maki chicken was stuffed with soy glazed wild mushrooms, baby carrot, and sweet onion. The chicken was super tender, most of us enjoyed this a lot.

Next we had 3 of their specialty sushi rolls, they were: Miku Roll, Pacific Roll, and of course, their signature Aburi Salmon Oshi Sushi. Soy sauce will not be served with most sushis here because they already had sauces on them.

I have to say, I absolutely loved the Aburi Salmon Oshi sushi. Other places try to imitate this, but Minami and Miku still have the best one. The salmon is fresh, it’s got just enough of the creamy Miku sauce, and the slice of jalapeño adds just a hint of spiciness. The other 2 rolls were really nice too, but we finished the salmon oshi last, because we were saving the best for last.

One dish that I came here for was the Premium Nigiri, which is a selection of 7 nigiri sushi. But after learning what Aburi (seared sushi with topping and sauce) is, I decided to get the Premium Aburi instead.

There were 7 pieces of aburi nigiri with mackerel, saba, a couple types of tuna, scallops, shrimp, and salmons. I liked this flight of nigiri sushi. The searing added another depth of flavour. Tasty indeed, but they are quite fancy and also pricey at $26.

Ok, so the dessert menu totally got us, and we ended up getting one dessert each after all that amazing food. And was I ever impressed with their desserts!

Aside from looking gorgeous, the Passion Fruit Verrine, was possibly one of the best dessert I’ve had, anywhere. It had all my favorite things, coconut milk panna cotta, crème fraîche, passion fruit sauce, coconut crumble and mango sorbet, so it’s very hard for me not to love this. The key thing was that the flavors of each component weren’t watered down, real ingredients were used.

Other great desserts on our table were Lemon Cream Brunoise, Strawberry Rhubarb Charlotte and Coconut Blueberry Cream. All were fantastic desserts, so awesome that I wish there was a Minami Desserts restaurant.

This is a nice restaurant to visit and just indulge. The food is great but the desserts are even better.

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Minami
1118 Mainland St
Vancouver, BC V6B5P2
(604) 685-8080