With Tojo, expect the unexpected and expect it to be brilliant
Mark Laba
Province
Hidekazu Tojo regaled the company at our table with rare antics. Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann, The Province
Tojo’s
Where: 1133 West Broadway, Vancouver
Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-872-8050
Drinks: Fully licensed.
Hours: Mon.-Sat., 5 p.m.-late, closed Sun.
It’s not often you see a famous chef yank down his own pants in the middle of his restaurant. But during a visit to the famed Tojo’s, as the restaurant was winding down with the last diners of the evening, our table was honoured by a visit from the master chef himself, Hidekazu Tojo. After regaling us with stories of the celebrities and rock stars he has cooked for, he then shifted to a darker theme of how to deal with hoodlums looking to mug inebriated folk tottering along downtown sidewalks after a night of wining and dining. His self-defence system seemed to have been based on a real-life experience.
“Take shirt, rip, then pants, pull down like so,” whereupon Tojo yanked his pants down to his knees, boxer shorts beneath hanging on for dear life and stumbled around the rear of the dining room. “Look very bad, like street person, ask them for change.”
“I think I just saw Tojo’s butt,” said North Shore Girl, one of the nine people at our table, gathered at the behest of our host, the mysterious Mr. Bentley, who was springing for the entire shindig. No small feat when you realize the prices here are equivalent to the U.S. Stimulus Package. Across the table, the Karate Kid (another dinner guest) nodded his head in agreement with Tojo’s evasive tactics.
Just part and parcel of the Tojo’s experience, where the unexpected is expected, whether it’s from the chef or on your plate. The room is huge and yet has a feeling of both community and intimacy, and strikes a balance between traditional and modern.
We began our journey with Tojo’s special sake and his signature tuna sashimi with special sesame and wasabi sauce ($15). Hint of sweetness lulls the senses along with the luscious tuna flesh, as soft and supple as Angelina Jolie’s lips and kind of similar in appearance until the hit of wasabi blasts through the nasal passages.
Next up, baked local sablefish ($27), so succulent it almost seemed sinful on the palate, finished with Tojo’s secret marinade and topped with a tiny nest of shredded yuzu for a citrus counterbalance, making this dish a textural and tasteful masterpiece.
The dishes kept on coming and my mind began to blur around the edges with the sake, lichee martinis and calvacade of culinary pleasures. So let it be known that I ate the gonads of a sea creature — sea urchin nigiri to be precise — because that’s what I discovered uni is. But these were the finest and freshest sea urchin gonads I’ve ever tasted, straight from Neptune‘s larder and about the same price as a Jacque Cousteau expedition. The eel nigiri was equally tasty.
There was also wild-prawn tempura and assorted veggie tempura (both $28), followed by three selections from Tojo’s Original Rolls. The Great BC Roll ($18) with barbecued salmon skin, salmon and cucumber, the salmon served warm to create a miniature temperate rainforest on the plate, the Tojo Roll ($12) with Dungeness crab, avocado, spinach and egg, and The Northern Light Roll ($14) with wild prawn tempura, avocado and a tinge of pineapple, all rolled into a thin cucumber crêpe.
My only beef was with the poultry course. In this case, a kind of teriyaki creation ($28) had chicken tougher than Colonel Sanders in a death cage match with Foghorn Leghorn. But the Japanese plum brandy was excellent and the delicate black-sesame panacotta dessert wondrous.
From the sublime to the downright strange, the bawdy to the beatified, all part of the mystery and mystique of this man and the special world he has created. Although you’ll pay through the nose and every other orifice you own for the experience.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Charlie the Tuna couldn’t even get a job valet parking at this place.
RATINGS: Food: A Service: A Atmosphere: A
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