I Tried It: Cofu Chinatown’s 18-course Vegan Omakase Experience

If there’s one thing that the Vancouver dining scene is not scant on, it’s Japanese restaurants—especially with sushi being a main staple of the city’s cuisine. But where we have an abundance of sushi, we’re lighter in plant-based Japanese options. (Though if you’re looking generally for great vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Vancouver, we’ve got a few recommendations for you.) 

Cofu Chinatown fills that gap: a new restaurant that brings a love of vegan food to life through Japanese culinary technique. The spot opened in July of this year on the corner of Gore and Pender, and its all-vegan omakase is the first of its kind in the city—actually, make that across the country. 

Omakase translates to “I’ll leave it up to you,” and that’s exactly the point, whether fish or veggies are on the menu: guests place their trust in the chef to curate a progression of courses that tell a story about the ingredients currently in season, creating a direct connection between diner and chef. Food is–after all–personal.

Cofu Chinatown in particular boasts a sleek, six-seat omakase counter where Chef Ko Tanimizu and owner-chef Akiko Gulkison (who also runs Cofu Pressed Sushi near Granville Island) lead a tightly choreographed dining experience—along with a casual dining room. And lucky me, I got to try out the intimate experience alongside five other plant-loving diners.

On arriving, I started with a cocktail: a bright and citrusy yuzu sour, while my tablemate tried the Brine and Blossom cocktail made with pickled cabbage juice. I braced for a savoury sip of my friend’s cocktail, but was pleasantly surprised when the aesthetically pleasing drink was still sweet on the tongue, and easy on the palate.

Then, the two-hour, 18-course meal began. To start, pieces of stewed sweet potato and daikon, earthy and fermented on the tongue, were tender to the touch. A bright bite of pickled red cabbage and tomato followed, then a silky chawanmushi—a steamed soy-milk custard layered with spinach and mushrooms, and a grilled vegetable yakitori skewer.

At the experience’s mid-point (yes, there’s a lovely and short intermission), the chefs talked about the local Japanese farm where they source their vegetables, which is reflected in the freshness of flavours: a clear soup of daikon and carrot with overarching notes of lemon peel acted as a palate cleanser, making way for sequence of technically beautiful, handmade, hand-pressed nigiris.

This is where the meal becomes a personal conversation between chef and diner—all through sense.

The first was potato nigiri, an inventive paste made of potato, served warm. The spot’s general manager, Riku Kurosaka, recommended we pick up each nigiri by hand rather than use chopsticks to feel the heat of the chef’s touch still in the rice. 

Next came the sea kelp nigiri, briny and clean, then a toriko—an elegant plant-based homage to salmon. An avocado and lotus root nigiri came topped with a pickled plum—creamy and tart in balance. A ghostly radish coat overtop of a colourful potato nigiri, crafted to look like a koi was a playful ode to the Central Asian fish. And the plant-based eel, made from eggplant, was seared before our very eyes by Chef Akiko at the counter, its “skin” crisped to mimic traditional unagi while the flesh turned soft and smoky under the flame.

Later came a cold sushi rice risotto, brightened with dill oil, nothing like its Italian namesake but equally satisfying, followed by a savoury pumpkin sponge cake with soy, maple and sesame crumble. To refresh the palate once more, a bright grapefruit sorbet paired with two chunks of cantaloupe sang. To end the experience, a selection of jewel-like gelees in different flavours come served alongside hand-whisked matcha.

But the end is not truly the end at this omakase—I was handed a fluffy Japanese pancake pastry filled with sweet red bean paste to take home, a lovely parting gift to wrap up an intimate evening. The entire 18-course omakase ($130 a person) felt less about proving vegan sushi can work and more about showing just how versatile vegetables can be when given the attention to detail usually reserved for fish; and how personal the omakase experience is when each piece is thoughtfully done. And the restaurant is certainly that.

Plus, the next time you have a vegan friend in town who wants to try out some of the stuff that Vancouver is best-known for, you can say, “I know just the place.”

Cofu Chinatown
488 Gore Ave.
Reservations here.