So… Entry #2 🙂 I am not a one hit wonder!

The past few months I have been obsessed with these damn “groupon” sytle coupons which has led to my spending more than a little money on coupons. The one plus side to this is that I get to try out new restaurants once in a while. Japas Bistro was one of these. So, to start off with this restaurant is just 1/2 a block from the Broadway Canada Line Station which makes it super easy to get to. It is a hole in the wall which I would have never set foot into if it wasn’t for this coupon that I had.

I would have never ventured out to this restaurant (afterall it is across a bridge!) if it wasn’t for the 50% off that I got and I would have missed out on some tasty food. And as an added bonus, it came with a free drink!

The free drink was a watermelon based drink. I think it might have just been blended watermelon. Whatever it was made of… it tasted good. I ordered a 2nd one after. Although at $4 per drink for a non-alcoholic bevie, I might not order it again.

To start my friend Tina and I ate some edamame (no photos since edamame is pretty standard stuff). – oh… and I forgot to take a photo and I didn’t think a photo of empty pods would make a good blog post!

Next up came gyoza.
I almost forgot to take photos of this too – which is why it only has 2 gyoza on the plate. I had never seen such long skinny gyoza before. They were tasty. Although, due to the long skinny nature of them, it made for not the greatest form factor for dipping in the sauce if you wanted to be able to avoid double dipping. I would order them again though.

Mmm… Pumpkin croquettes – how can you go wrong? Deep fried goodness. The pumpkin was nice, light and fluffy, the panko crust crispy. My only complaint with this dish was that two halves came on a soy based sauce and two halves on tartar sauce. Since I don’t like tartar, this was a miss with me. Next time I order this – if it is still on the menu (I think it is a seasonal thing) I will ask for no tartar sauce.

Any trip to a new Japanese izakaya place would not be complete without trying the ebi mayo. I don’t know why this is, because more often than not, I am disappointed. Japas Bistro was ok… not fantastic, but not bad. Pros – I loved the citrus flavour of the orange added to the ebi. Cons – too much mayo made it a little soggy.

Next course… beef short ribs. This one was the only dish I could say I will definitely not order again. The dish wasn’t terrible but I much prefer korean galbi. To be honest, I think I liked the cabbage underneath the ribs that had soaked up the sauce better… but perhaps that is because by this point in the meal I was realizing that we hadn’t really ordered any veggie dishes.

So this was the final dish, and without question the highlight of the night. Beef sashimi. The sauce was bizarre, but fantastically so. Mustard, olive oil, soy, and a lot of Greek seasoning. Tina mostly tasted the mustard, I mostly tasted the Greek seasoning. Either way we both loved it. I can honestly say that I have never had beef sashimi that tasted like this, and this alone makes this restaurant worth going back for. 🙂

Overall rating 3.5/5 The lack of ambiance in the restaurant automatically dropped this by a point, the food, was mostly good, with only one meh dish. I’ll go back, but there are so many other groupons to use first!