Sushi Sen worth the drive to Squamish
Daily treks to hand-pick seafood from select suppliers ensures quality eats
David Yuji Kite, of Sushi Sen, with his wife Maki and some of his colourful sushi, along with dramatic kimonos in the cosy Squamish restaurant tucked away in a little plaza.
Photograph by: Mark Van Manen, PNG, Vancouver Sun
The straighter, wider, safer Sea to Sky Highway is worth a scenic drive. And you can't simply go for a Sunday drive, carbon footprint and all, so make it a destination drive. Go for lunch or dinner at Sushi Sen in Squamish. It's tucked away in a little plaza and you wouldn't find it without a heads-up, but you'll be glad when you do.
Squamish residents won't take kindly to this broadcast of Sen's virtues, since it's already busting at the seams. It's very affordable, and the food, especially the sushi, is the allure.
We arrived really early, like at 5 p.m. when doors supposedly open. Imagine our surprise when we found the place was already full at this unorthodox hour. We grabbed what was left of stools at the sushi bar. (Seems the place opens earlier for takeout, so people charge in to claim a table.) Latecomers (at 5:20!) waited patiently, even outside in the cold.
I can safely say the chef/owner of Sushi Sen was the shortest cook on the planet when he began his culinary journey. David Yuji Kite started cooking by his mother's side when he was three, in Japan.
His sister Ruth Kite, who manages Sushi Sen, remembers: "He did a good job. When he was very young, he was cooking Japanese, Chinese and Italian food."
By 15, he was apprenticing under a sushi chef. "He was pretty skilful," reports his sister. "They loved him so much they started teaching him a lot."
He moved to Vancouver and worked at a couple of Japanese restaurants before opening Taka Sushi on West Fourth. I reviewed Taka in 1998. "It glitters amid the heap of Japanese restaurants that open each year. The sushi sparkles with freshness and specials are innovative," I wrote.
He sold the restaurant a few years later and it became Yuji. (The new owner happened to have the same name as him.) He went back to Japan and opened a restaurant for his sister-in-law, then returned to Canada and opened Sushi Sen four years ago, hoping to captivate the healthy, active population of Squamish. Olympic gold medallist Maelle Ricker is a regular.
It requires a little more effort making sparklingly fresh sushi in Squamish. He or an assistant treks into Vancouver every day to hand-pick seafood from his select suppliers. And picking out quality is key. He knows what cuts to make on a live fish so muscles don't tighten up on the drive back and to disperse the freshness and sweetness through the fish. He can read the subtle signs of fish not up to his standards.
While most sushi chefs buy albacore tuna already cut, he buys them whole to control the freshness and the cuts. And speaking of cuts, his sushi knife is scarily sharp and glides through fish as if through air.
There was no trace of fishiness in the flounder nigiri I ordered. I ordered uni tempura to see how such a floppy thing could be made into tempura but we got uni nigiri instead. No matter; I love really good uni and it was.
The triple salmon roll brought in different salmon notes: smoked salmon, grilled salmon, and salmon roe. Crab roll featured real crab, none of that obnoxious tarted-up pollock, the understudy for crab.
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