A few friends and I went to Torafuku on Tuesday. The only Vancouver Dine Out reservation time that was available was 8PM, so you can bet I was starving by the time I got there.

The menu looked super interesting, and I can confirm that when the food came, it didn’t disappoint. They like surprising your taste buds and making you question what you’re eating. Take for example the water. I went to the washroom, and when I came back everyone at my table demanded I try the water and tell them what it tastes like. I glanced at the seemingly normal glass of water, and made them promise they didn’t add weird stuff into it.

Turns out they were trying to figure out what it tasted like, and everyone else at the table was biased since they had swapped opinions while I was in the washroom. I sipped it and it tasted of…cinnamon? It gave the water an almost creamy taste. Then we looked at the jug of water and realize there was a cinnamon stick they had thrown inside. Very interesting.

For appetizers, each appie was to be shared between two guests. We had a table of 6, and it ended up working out since 4 of us wanted the sashimi salad and 2 of us wanted the scotch egg. The sashimi salad wasn’t anything extraordinary, but the scotch egg on a bird’s nest (fried noodles) looked really good. For the entree, I had the Call of Duty (CoD), which featured cod in broth. It was alright, and again, not super special. But sprinkled onto the dish were weird bits and pieces, like this stem-like vegetable I’ve never seen before, as well as root veggies that tasted a bit like potatoes…and water chestnut?

The majority of the group had the Kare Kare, which they assured me was delicious. It looked pretty good, but sadly, I was allergic to the peanut butter sauce so I couldn’t get it. Lastly, we finished off with a yuzu jelly dessert served with condensed milk ice cream. This was pretty good, and the yuzu gave a nice tangy kick to the sweet ice cream.

Torafuku is definitely interesting. A lot of Dineout menus have your standard salmon or steak for a choice of entree, and while not bad, it’s definitely nothing special. I like that Torafuku was interesting and purposely puts a spin on their food. Plus, the service was excellent, especially given how busy Dine Out was!