This Miku Vancouver Restaurant Review is from our 2019 visit, while staying at the Fairmont Pacific Rim (forthcoming review). Miku is known for introducing aburi (flame seared) sushi to Canada, and since we'd so enjoyed some of the flame grilled pieces of our omakase at Sushisho Masa in Tokyo, we wanted to try Miku while in Vancouver.
Miku Restaurant Location and Hours
Miku is located at 200 Granville St # 70, at the intersection of Canada Place and Howe Street. The entrance is off of Howe Street. Lunch is served from 11:30am-3pm daily, and dinner from 5pm-10:30pm Sunday-Wednesday, and until 11pm Thursday-Saturday, with Bar Bites from 3-5pm daily.
I recommend making an advance reservation, as the restaurant gets busy. Particularly in demand are the tables with window seating and a view of the harbor.
Miku Restaurant Ambience
Miku has two main seating areas, both of which were very busy during our late weekend lunch visit. We'd requested a window table, but they were all occupied when we arrived, so we opted to wait about 15 minutes until one opened up. There was a good mix of clients, including couples, groups of friends, and a few families.
Miku Menu and Food
Miku's specialty is aburi sushi, but its menu also offers salads and appetizers, cooked dishes such as miso baked sablefish, traditional nigiri sushi and rolls, and even unique desserts.
We started with an appetizer of brussels sprout chips, sprinkled with togarashi, that ubiquitous Japanese spice mix of red chili pepper, sansho (Japanese pepper), roasted orange peel, black sesame seeds, white sesame seeds and nori. I like this flavor combination, although I'd have preferred somewhat crispier brussels sprouts.
Next we tried the Aburi Chirashi Tart lunch special, which was beautifully presented and excellent, with its layers of flame seared aburi sushi, avocado, and sushi rice, all topped with tobiko, tuna and shrimp–I highly recommend this if visiting for lunch.
Next we shared the Miku Zen, a combination of four dishes from the kitchen, along with aburi sushi. Of the kitchen dishes, our favorites were the baked miso sablefish and the tempura prawn with spicy aioli.
But best of all were the aburi sushi, particularly the salmon oishi sushi. Before being flame seared, Miku sauce, which is made in-house, is applied, forming a creamy and slightly sweet layer that is crisped when seared. Oishi! (Oishi is Japanese for delicious).
At most Japanese restaurants, there either wouldn't be an dessert, or it would be some fruit or green tea ice cream that you wouldn't necessarily leave room for. But Miku has a more robust offering from its own pastry chef:
We'd heard especially good things about the Green Tea Opera dessert, so we chose to share that. Normally I'm not a fan of azuki beans, but here it was just one of the flavors, together with layers of green tea genoise, matcha cream and dark chocolate ganache, which was very satisfying, especially with the matcha ice cream. In fact, the matcha ice cream was the best I've tried, apart from homemade versions, because the matcha flavor was so pronounced. Usually I find matcha ice cream too cloyingly sweet, but Miku's version wasn't. My son didn't care for it, because of the strong matcha flavor, but fans of matcha will enjoy it.
The Verdict
We really enjoyed our visit to Miku, with the Aburi Chirashi Tart, the Salmon Oishi Sushi and the Green Tea Opera dessert. Although it was good to try the kitchen offerings in the Miku Zen combination, and the miso sablefish was especially good, if I was to return, I would only focus on the aburi sushi, especially the salmon oishi sushi.
If you've recently visited Miku Restaurant in Vancouver, what was your experience?
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