Manzo Izakaya


Debbie and I a little while ago happened to be in Richmond and wanted to try something a little different than our usual choices (ie: HK style Cafe's). So we decide to take a detour through Alexandria rd in Richmond.

This is a great area for the adventurous, literally a street of nothing but restaurants (mainly Hotpot restaurants, HK Cafe's, Taiwanese Bubble tea cafe's, Izakaya's, etc).

We were craving Japanese, and there are quite a few of these around and a lot of them look identical, after some discussion, we decided on Manzo Izakaya (simply because it was busier, which is always a good sign!).

This place specializes with Robata (grilled meat on skewers)

We started with a Beef Sukiyaki

A simple beef stew with cellophane noodles, fishcake & tofu. A great winter food item. This one was ok, I was hoping it would be raw dish and cooked table side. A good dish with rice, not bad for $10!

We ordered some Robata's consisting of Chicken, sweet potato cake, and wait for it..... Chicken skin!
(unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the chicken skin or sweet potato).

Best dishes of the night! The skewers were juicy, flavourful with a great dipping sauce. Especially the crispy grilled chicken skin! Extremely guilty pleasure!

Miso grilled Sablefish 
 Another great grilled dish, except for two things. It is a tiny porton! And it costs $16!!! It was barely two ounces of meat! Great dish, but an absolute ripoff!

Our final dish was a Pork Cheek fried rice. 
Sadly this was bland, and flavourless. A real miss. I would avoid ordering this next time.

Overall the meal was hit & miss. We loved the robata, but everything else was kinda average and a bit pricey. We will be coming back to this restaurant, but next time it will only be for Robata!

The Flying Pig

*The photo's are a bit small today, click on them for their full sized glory!*

My cousin from out of town dropped by and I wanted to take her and my family out to a nice western meal, as we had been having nothing but Chinese food since she arrived! I've been looking forward to going to this restaurant for a while now, the menu has a nice fancy comfort food theme to it, and finally had a chance to go there.

Sometimes you don't get what you hope for...

It was Sunday brunch so we had a few breakfast themed dishes.

We ordered a Pulled Pork Poutine to share

My cousin had never heard of Poutine, so this was a nice intro. Fries were good, but pork was a little bland but overall who doesn't love Fries + Gravy + Cheese!?!??

Debbie ordered the Chicken Cutlet with mashed potatoes and vegetables

Pretty darn good, the chicken was well cooked and the mashed potatoes had some nice flavour to it, another hit!

My Cousin ordered the Croque Madam

Basically a ham & cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top, she enjoyed it and was very filling

My Sister ordered the Baked pulled Pork Gnocchi

Bland Pork, the Gnocchi was pasty, and sauce was non-existent. She only ate half and didn't bring it home. I think this says everything.

I ordered the Braised Shortrib Pasta with a creamy mushroom sauce

And it was not good...

It's strange that the dish was extremely salty, yet had no real flavour to it! The pasta was soggy and broken, and the sauce again had no flavour. The "shortrib" was just some cheap braised chuck steak and didn't have the texture or flavour of a true bone-in shortrib (but in their defense a lot of restaurants around town have "braised Shortrib" on the menu, when in fact it is just some cheap braised beef).

Overall I have to give this restaurant a pass, but maybe you'll have a better meal than me.