ONIGIRI YA Broadway — Local services in Vancouver

It’s great to see a shop like Onigiri Ya open and fill a niche in the city that doesn’t have many local businesses filling it.

The onigiri themselves are fresh and very uniform. The rice is either unsalted or so lightly salted that it has no impact on flavour. This does give the rice a bit of a bland flavour but does leave everything feeling very fresh. If you enjoy more umami, seasoned rice or salt, opt for selections like the Nasu Miso (eggplant). The filling is a little sparse, but given the price, not wholly unexpected and not dissimilar from other vendors I’ve encountered.

While some of the onigiri are packaged to keep the seaweed separate and crispy until you open it, others are in packaging where the seaweed is moist/soft and clings to the rice. This can make getting it out of the packaging without ripping the seaweed a bit challenging and it does stick to the fingers a bit more. If you enjoy crispy seaweed, opt for the onigiri packaging that keeps it separate. That said, the soft seaweed does impart a slightly more umami flavour into the rice, so it’s really customer preference here when it comes to taste and texture. These are both valid ways of making onigiri.

For value, the onigiri and the meals are a pretty solid deal. Onirigi pieces range depending on the ingredients but go from $1.99 to $3.99. Meals can be a little more. This can make for an ideal cheap, grab-and-go lunch as you likely won’t need more than one to three to fill you up.

Onigiri Ya moved into the former Menya Juemon ramen restaurant in early September and, at least on the front end, few renovations appear to have been done to the space before it opened. This sort of gives the space a “not yet complete” or pop-up feel. Because the shop only uses the very front section, the space is small and barely accommodates one-way travel through the shop. Hopefully they can open the space a bit more to accommodate their growing popularity. Don’t be surprised if you see an “onigiri sold out” sign on the door and have to wait until tomorrow to get your...

It is nice to have somewhere local to grab onigiri! Their hours are very limited and they are not open on there weekend which sometimes can make it confusing.

We tried the eggplant, kimchi and pork, and tuna mayo onigiri.

Tuna mayo was definitely the winner. Eggplant was okay but a little salty. Kimchi and Pork...tasted like BBQ sauce not Kimchi which was honestly disappointing. I know they called it "kimuchi" because it's Japanese style...but just use the good Korean stuff!

I liked that the onigiri were fresh and warm (being made while we waited), as a lot of places put them in a fridge which makes the rice get hard (terrible!). BUT the fresh style they make seems the steam the heck out of the seaweed so it's almost...like green paint on the outside 😂. No crispy seaweed texture which is sad.

I will come again as the price and taste are good. But I still prefer the ones at Ebiten because of...

I've tried their Nasu Miso,Unagi, Teriyaki Chicken, Tuna Mayo, Salmon and Yaki Onigiris, and also their Tonjiru, and it has been amazing.

The quality of the ingredients is very good, and each onigiri has a lot of flavour. Something else I also liked is that on each one of their onigiris they also declare the ingredients used in the onigiri, so then you know what you are eating. The onigiris are also fresh. I liked as well how they also offer Warm Food options for Grab & Go. They also offer Bento Combos, pudding, and drinks.

The service is really fast, and usually friendly, so the service is truly efficient for the Grab & Go concept.

The atmosphere for this ONIGIRI YA location considering it's made for Grab & Go I think it's very pleasant, the music is a blend of both soothing and energetic beats, and the interior design is well made for the Grab...