Moltan — Restaurant in Vancouver

Missing a couple of ingredients…

It has been a moment since I first came here so decided on a revisit instead of Octopus Garden up the street.

This place is located on the Cornwall street strip near Kits beach. Inside is a little compact size place therefore reservation is suggested especially during peak hours.

Upon arrival, managed to find parking out front on the street and had a table after a 15min wait. The host and staffs behind the bar were welcoming and friendly.

After seated, here were the food I ordered;

2 complimentary refreshing drinks. I believed every diner was given one. Very nice, appreciated! Hot sake. A little generic hot sake for me to warm up the appetite. Uni shooters. I don’t know what attempted creation it was but it was awful, it tasted like i was taking a soy sauce shot. Moltan’s ultimate sashimi. When it arrived, I honestly thought the server gave me the wrong order. The selection was okay but there’s literally ZERO culinary effort and thoughts putted into this sashimi platter. The table beside me with a $30 sashimi order looked more desirable than mine, ultimate disappointment. Chu toro, O toro, kanpachi, real crabmeat, hotate, uni, foie gras nigiris. Everything was fresh, tasty, and the rice was nicely seasoned and good firmness. The Moltan roll. Was informed out of caviar and if I am okay with a substitute ingredient. Told him okay as long as good, plus caviar is nothing new to me. Unfortunately the roll came out a mess in terms of everything. 1) it’s your signature roll?!? 2) the roll is $100! 3) missing the caviar already 4) replacing caviar with a tiny chunk of foie gras is a bit insulting? Lol Therefore at least put some effort and make it counts? (Facepalm) Lobster rose pasta. It’s decently okay, good amount of sauce and the lobster was tender and wasn’t over cooked.

Overall, this is small little place, cozy in a way but definitely don’t want the 2 tables at the end closes to the washrooms. The services here were okay and friendly from the staffs. Unfortunately this time around, the food fell quite short especially when I ordered its supposedly best and most expensive items on the menu. It wasn’t worth $500 for 2 ppl, have better and more consistent places for that...

I've been eyeing this restaurant for a while and was excited to finally try it out! At one point I saw a lot of food influencers raving about the place and I had pretty high expectations.

Overall the food was OK. It feels like it's trying really hard to be like octopus garden with some of its pricing but it falls very short. Service could be better. We had to ask for Wasabi which is weird for a Japanese restaurant. I appreciate that they served real wasaibi though.

Their uni shooter was also delicious.

The bluefin trio taster is good value for money but unfortunately the otoro quality was not there. We were served 3 pieces with a lot of chewy bits, and having had melt in your mouth otoro before, it just didn't taste right. I asked about the chewiness and the server just told me to chew more.. Lol. They also seemed to have forgotten our order until I asked them about it after waiting for it for a while. I think they recognized this and ended up giving us complimentary yuzu tea as we left.

Edit: upon reading other reviews I realized the complimentary yuzu was part of their standard service. If so, it was disappointing that they did not even acknowledge that they forgot our order.

The salmon ikura aburi was OK but a little disappointing. Pictures of this roll on their menu and ig showed that each piece would be loaded with a generous portion of ikura but clearly this is not the case. There was a pathetic 2 pieces of ikura on each piece of salmon. It felt deceiving to be honest.

The chopped scallop roll and saba battera were good. The house kaisendon was really underwhelming for 55$. It felt like they were trying hard to increase the perception of quality by putting gold flakes on the fish.

Finally the restaurant is super tight. At one point a group of 5 had to squeeze in behind me with their strollers to get to their tables and it definitely impacted our dining experience. Again there seems to be a disconnect between the experience and the price tag and these things matter. Service was also overall very average when I compared it to octopus garden.

Overall I would stick to the basic rolls here and pay the premium at...

The restaurant was small and intimate but we were able to input our order beforehand while waiting for our table to clear as we were next up.

They were able to accommodate a group of 7, which is above their norm, but were nonetheless extremely hospitable, serving us tea along with some complimentary sodas to start off the night after having us wait a bit longer beyond our reservation time.

We ordered the uni shooters, rose risotto, creamy truffle pasta, uni pasta. The pastas and risotto were all fantastic with bold flavours and a sprinkle of gold leaf and/or an edible flower.

For sushi we had the ultimate Moltan sushi that had an array of seafood from amberjack to toro and of course some of their signature uni all on a bed of shiso leafs and ice.

As our group wanted to try a bit of everything we also opted to get three different types of aburi oishi sushi: salmon, saba and “hot baby” all of which were a delight.

Midway through our meal we were given a complimentary house salad of arugula, strawberries, green grapes in a light vinaigrette. Additionally the sides to accompany the fish, namely the freshly ground wasabi and house pickles were a delightful accompaniment.

The drink options made it tough to choose from given their variety of sake but we opted for their cocktails specifically a large order of the green grape which while it isn’t stated on their menu is made with a wonderful in house syrup known as “Chung” as opposed to something from a bottle.

As we were preparing to leave we were handed cups of complimentary yuzu lemon tea as we headed out into the night to aid in digestion.

Moltan’s service was excellent and honestly one of the most memorable parts of our experience! Would definitely come here again for a special occasion and recommend...