Shiro

By Andy Wednesday June 20, 2012

I am an unproductive person. However, as I continue to waste copious amounts of time, I am beginning to slowly realize why I can never get anything done in a reasonable amount of time: I am too indecisive. Whether it is selecting a flavour of gelato, a university (gulp), a course, or, in particular, a restaurant, I find it quite difficult to settle on anything in a decent amount of time. You can imagine how I fare on multiple choice examinations. I feel as if this largely stems from the fact that I rarely ever really have an opinion on anything. Although I will occasionally get cravings or a lack of desire to consume certain cuisines, I often find myself impartial towards a wide variety of restaurants. As such, I can literally drive for miles on end discussing restaurant possibilities yet never actually settling on one. Such an occasion is how I ended upon Shiro, a place that had admittedly interested me thanks to its favourable reviews on Urbanspoon.

Located in South Cambie (SoCa? Is that a thing now, too?) Shiro is your friendly neighbourhood Japanese-owned Japanese restaurant. Parking is relatively limited in the small complex this restaurant calls home, but there is free 2 hour street parking in the adjacent side streets for your perusal.

The inside is also rather small and gave a very homey vibe. Like always, I came to dine at a later hour in the dinner period, so I was not faced with a wait. We elected to sit at our own table over the sushi bar.

We started off with the salmon sashimi ($4.75). They were unfortunately out of the sockeye salmon, so we had to settle for the Atlantic salmon. The pieces were reasonably sized, served at an ideal temperature, and tasted relatively fresh, although I did miss the distinctive taste and red colour of the sockeye.

This was followed up by the nigiri combo ($14.25). I may have said this before in previous posts (does anybody actually actively keep up with this?), but I find combinations like these to be great for indecisive people such as myself. Again, the fish was fresh, and they mostly adhered to the slabs of acceptably cohesive rice underneath.

The combo included a California roll on the side, so you can feel like you’re gaining more bang for your buck. Some people may like oversized maki, but I am fine with my pieces having a smaller rice to filling ratio, such as what we received here. The roll was loaded full with fresh avocado and made for a reasonably nice addition to have on the side.

Next up was the spicy scallop roll ($6.95). These were mildly spicy and had a fair bit of shellfish within them, although their rice to filler ratio was a bit less than the California roll.

Following in some kind of tradition with these spicy rolls, the spicy salmon roll ($5.40) was also ordered. These were, of course, quite similar to the spicy scallop roll in terms of taste, and this is attributed to the spicy sauce. However, they offered a bit more in terms of actual fish content.

When the bill came, it was accompanied a complimentary pack of Strawberry Pocky! I don’t think I’ve ever been this delighted about receiving something that orders me to pay money (I see what you did there, Shiro). Fun fact about Andy: I can’t pronounce the word “Pocky” correctly. Pocky? Poke-y? I am confused by these Asian manifestations. In any case, as you may have noticed by the relative lack of description of the items, Shiro seems to have registered as overwhelmingly average in my mind. While nothing was a particular miss, nothing enticed my taste buds to a great extent, either. I’ll admit that this may have resulted from our simplistic choice of items. I can’t deny this place of its charm, though; this was certainly not your washed-up Chinese sushi restaurant in the suburbs. I may be biased, however, because I have a tendency to think that anything “authentic” is automatically better than what their distant contemporaries could prepare. Even so, Shiro wouldn’t be my top choice for sushi, although it is far from being the last.

Conclusion: Andy ate a fair amount.