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!