VanLove sushi & more — Restaurant in Vancouver

I’M SO CONFUSED

As an Asian person, I feel like this experience made me really uncomfortable and almost like there’s a bit of cultural appropriation of a cuisine I love and have a personal connection to. It’s ok if it’s something new and different altogether and call it a merging of cultures…but if you don’t bother to explain, then do a poor job making a traditional cuisine, and also price it at a premium… all while other trained sushi chefs have dedicated their life to this craft and offer it to the community for a fraction of the price that you’re charging… it feels wrong.

We searched for sushi open late and found this place which seemed to have great reviews, but now I’m wondering who wrote these other reviews?!

My experience was so different than what I read about from others so I’m writing to offer an alternative perspective.

It was an hour before closing so we called to make sure we had enough time before last call. The person who answered didn’t understand us. We mistakenly assumed the language barrier meant more authentic Asian food, but when we arrived, we were the only Asians 😅. We arrived to realize we were at a Ukrainian run sushi restaurant.

PRICING:

Sticker shock with pricing where Philadelphia rolls started at $20/roll for 8 pcs.

FOOD:

Philadelphia roll - quite basic. I never thought I’d complain about too much cream cheese but it’s that and the inconsistency of how the roll was made… some pieces had only cream cheese, and others were still heavy on the cream cheese but with the presence of some other toppings. For $20 I had higher expectations.

If I’m paying $20 a roll in Vancouver, I expect Aburi-level quality. Maybe a torch to have seared some of it, or other more complex toppings, or maybe it was deep fried, or in general much more complex flavours. And consistency in every bite.

Salmon and avocado roll - in some pieces, the avocado seemed to disappear… in other pieces the salmon seemed to disappear.

SERVICE/ATMOSPHERE:

The owner is very smiley and seems friendly. We didn’t get any service (water top up or even hot tea) after we got seated, even though we were the only people there.

The doors were left open the whole time we were there so people smoking, dogs barking and almost running into the restaurant, a housing-insecure person asking for expired sushi… we got all of that as we were dining and it was pouring rain outside so it made me feel like we were still outside in the rain.

We asked for recommendations and they didn’t mention the California roll special with any purchase. We only saw the sandwich board on our way out.

There was a wall of items in the middle of the restaurant that seemed to be for sale for relief in Ukraine? I didn’t look at it carefully enough because I was so confused. Nobody explained anything to us. We just kind of stared at it as we soaked everything else in.

CONFUSION:

Who are the people raving about “Ukrainian sushi” and how are they experts on the topic? I still don’t know what Ukrainian sushi is and can’t help but wonder why the Ukrainian owners started a sushi restaurant? Is sushi a thing in Ukraine? What makes it different? Is business connected with the...

I’ll start off by saying that I honestly felt like I got baited into trying this place based off the numerous high-rate reviews. My suggestion would be to include the low-rate reviews in your research before going here, as I suspect a number of these high-rate reviews are inaccurate, (or paid?)

This is Ukrainian-style sushi. I’m not exactly sure what this means, but there was nothing inside the restaurant, nor on the menu that explained what makes Ukrainian-style sushi unique and desirable, aside from the business being Ukrainian-owned and run.

For this, I’m going to assume this business is comfortable participating at the same level and expertise as Vancouver’s highly saturated selection and highly competitive sushi restaurants and does not see it being advantageous to leverage their uniqueness. I’ll be basing my review on that.

The atmosphere is very cafe-like, in which there’s nothing wrong, especially being a cafe. It only gets confusing when you realize they’re really pushing to be a sushi restaurant more than a nice coffee and pastry shop in a prime location.

The service staff was friendly, though we found ourselves grabbing our own water refills at the “self-serve” water station. This is fine in a cafe setting, but for a sit-down, table-served meal, I felt this was unacceptable. They also left the doors wide open the entire time. It was raining and slightly windy. It devalued the dining experience.

They really fall short on the food. First off, it’s priced extremely high for what you get, and in comparison to almost every other sushi restaurant, (excl fine dining). Way too much cream cheese in the “highly recommended” Philadelphia Roll and it was all I could taste. There were major inconsistencies in the amount of ingredients in the other rolls we ordered. Sorry, but this reminded me of gas station sushi.

Again, if perhaps the business leveraged and educated guests on their Ukrainian take on sushi, I’d have been more understanding and compassionate, but comparing this to every other sushi restaurant in town, this is EXTREMELY poor. We paid $34 for two rolls, both of which were subpar. There’s an endless selection of sushi restaurants that serve exceptional food, made by highly trained and experienced chefs at much lower prices.

Which brings me to my last point. The idea of sushi with an authentic Ukrainian flair sounds absolutely wonderful, but not at the expense of quality. I don’t care who is making the food, so long as the skills and experience show and can justify the cost. This wasn’t it. Sorry.

I’m not looking for a response of, “thanks for the feedback, we’ll take this back and improve….etc”.

Perhaps there’s nothing to improve?

Perhaps I just want to better understand how an 8-piece sushi roll with majority of it being cream cheese justifies the $20 spend here in this city as opposed to eating at any other sushi place that has delicious, better-priced food made by...

These positive reviews here must NOT be from regular sushi eaters because the food was so disappointing. The tempura cost $16 and was literally just 4 pieces of prawn and 8 pieces of yam - all soft and incredibly TINY. The yam were the size of a French fry covered in batter. The shrimp tempura was still cold on the inside. I can bet you it’s the Kirkland frozen tempura sold in Costco for $23 for 30 pieces! It’s just battered, and not the typical larger and panko-coated tempura you’d get from a Japanese restaurant with a crunch. I wish I took a photo because I was flabbergasted at that joke of a “tempura”. The sushi was too fishy, not fresh, and a good amount of skin was still on the tuna - tasted like it was canned. And each 8pc roll was about $20. You can tell the Japanese authenticity is not present in the food whatsoever and now I fear the fish wasn’t cleaned properly. I know real wasabi is more expensive so even Japanese restaurants will sometimes use faux wasabi, but VanLove had some weird whipping cream texture on their “wasabi” which had no kick either.

There was no explanation in the restaurant or in the menu about what is “Ukrainian Sushi” so after trying their food and being confused I had to research it myself. As it turns out Ukraine has their own “sushi” which is far from the original. While perhaps the goal of this restaurant is to bring to Canada the inauthentic way that Ukraine does it, I wish there was some sort of warning and at least executing it properly instead by cutting corners by serving us frozen food in small portions. Even outside of culture, the preparation of the food was not good nor well thought out.

Between me and my husband we were given a complimentary slice of lemon pound cake to share - which tasted like it was just from Costco as well, along with lemon tea. The server was very kind and attentive, and the atmosphere was fine but the food was so not worth it - I regret going there so much. Overpriced for low quality. You can find much better sushi just about anywhere else and for much cheaper. If you want to settle for mediocre quality, buy this same food from Costco yourself and...