BESPOKE & SUSHI — Restaurant in Vancouver

ONLINE ORDERING EXPERIENCE (ZOMI)

Do not order online on their zomi menu. Just call in to place an order. On their online zoom menu you’ll see a bunch of menu items that are half off off, but these items are either missing on their physical in-restaurant menu so you can’t compare or are otherwise the same price as they should be without a discount (for example a signature roll on zomi that you can’t find on the restaurant menu is $19.50 and is always on a half off offer of $9.75 but you’ll see all their signature rolls on their physical menu are about $10-$12 anyway and never $19 regular price, in the restaurant itself. So it’s more of a pretend discount. An illusion that you are saving money but you’re actually helping them pay for the fees that zomi bills them to operate the menu. You also pay about 12% more than would otherwise be on the receipt in my case $2.32 on top of an $18.11 after tax price (12.8%), though zomi says they don’t charge commission fees, which essentially means they are already tipping themselves 12.8% so there’s no need to add a tip.

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IN-RESTAURANT EXPERIENCE: Quality of food is great. Menu design and the way dishes are played seems to change on a daily basis. I wish it was more consistent because it can become confusing. Salad could use a bit more dressing and a lot more acid. Free parking in parking lot or on the street. Can be difficult during peak times as there are three restaurants and a cafe in the area, plus a cultural centre nearby that often is rented out for evening events.

Service is consistently courteous. Mobile menu to order direct to table as well as mobile take out ordering is available.

ABOUT CASH TRANSACTION DISCOUNTS:

The 10% off cash transactions is brilliant. I did the math, and I saved about a $1 on my transaction, even with GST charged. I see a separate ledger is kept for these transactions and the amount I gave was not the amount written down on the paper. Which means if they don’t remit the GST charged to you to the CRA, after tips they also made an extra dollar compared to credit card or debit card transactions, which also incur a merchant fee. Win-win. The 10% is a rational sweet spot. ...

Very casual Japanese and poke restaurant, but the food was great! I tried the aburi unagi bowl. The unagi was super rich and delicious and the vegetables in the salad portion of the bowl were fresh. I also really liked the inclusion of the tamago pieces - it went very well with the unagi. The presentation was simple but very appealing. The bowl with included miso soup is $19.5 with white rice, which I think is a great price given the size, quality, and especially the ample portion of unagi, BUT if you sub brown rice as I did it's $2 extra. How is it that much more expensive to use brown rice in one bowl? Not docking a star for this because $21.5 as a final price was still fine with me for this dish, just seems like a heavy upcharge. I also think brown rice and unagi go great together so in my eyes it's worth it to get this upgrade. Green tea with refills was complimentary with dine-in, which was a pleasant surprise! From the outside I thought it might be a quick counter-service deal, but it's closer to a full sit-down restaurant. You can seat yourself and pay at the register when you're finished, but there's menus at the table and waiter service. The staff was very polite and made me feel at home. Unfortunately I don't come down to this neighbourhood often, but if I did I'd be back in...

BESPOKE & SUSHI (Vancouver)

7/10

This place has 4.7 stars on google! Must be good right?! Unfortunately of the two items I had, only one was good!

PINK PANTHER ROLL $12.95 Freshwater eel, crab, avocado, cucumber, pea shoots, aburi salmon, ikura, spicy eel sauce. Overall the taste was pretty good and the price was good too. The only thing to improve upon was maybe the sushi rice taste/quality. 8/10

WILD SALMON OSHI SUSHI $12.75 Wild salmon, jalapeno, miso mayo. I was quite disappointed in this one. The price was good, but it was pretty bad, so bad that I didn't even want to finish this. I think they added too much rice vinegar to the sushi rice and every bite was a bit 'sour' to the taste. Also the sauce they had on was very underwhelming. Could barely taste it! It just tasted like seared salmon on vinegar almost! I LOVE salmon oishi sushi from other places, but this is the first time I couldn't finish it cause of the taste! 2/10

Would I come back? Mayybe.... there were a few other things I wanted to try but I'm on edge cause I don't want to be...