Hon-jin Yaletown Sushi Restaurant

Hello hello! How is everyone doing? I can’t believe that it’s already the long weekend and somehow April is practically over. Time flies when you’re busy…hence this short and sweet post. Get it? That’s why there’s a picture of a mini blizzard? It’s short and sweet? Oh nevermind…

We had several robata items: ebi shiitake, saba shioyaki, tara miso, yaki nasu, unagi kabayaki. I like how they didn't put too much spice or sauce for their rotaba items, so the original taste of the food is still there. They all look presentable; however, the unagi can be less blackened (I hardly see the color of the unagi). For the hotate and hamachi sushi, the rice portion is small but the fish portion is big. The tuna and salmon sashimi look and taste fine.

The service is good for take-out. The staff gave us all the details without us asking on the phone: he repeated the order, gave us the total, and told us the approx. time for pick up. He also asked us if we want regular or sockeye salmon for the sashimi, and they use the Japanese motif box for the sashimi instead of the regular styrofoam box. These attributes make me want to try the other food from them.

Always delicious! Service is great. Sushi is very high quality and fresh. Love the Fish Karage, Yaletown and Rainforest rolls and the Teriyaki chicken!

Second time in this restaurant, it's probably one of the best Japanese restaurants at this price range in Yaletown. Roomy atmosphere with very friendly staff, not overly attentive - just to the right amount of service.

Ordered the seafood okonomiyaki, salmon sashimi, and sanma shioyaki. The okonomiyaki is a not dry enough, nor is it flavour rich enough compared to those I've had in Osaka, but I'd say it is of a pretty good standard. The other 2 dishes as expected - no surprises, but good quality.

$29 Taste of Yaletown. Crab salad (fresh crab meat and crispy tempura flakes mixed with ginger mayonnaise) 3/5 - The ginger mayonnaise was too powerful than the crab. Crispy tempura flakes were there for texture.
Salmon Tartar (chopped salmon, avocado and cucumber served on a shisho leaf tempura) 3.5/4 - We like the leaf tempura than the salmon tartar. just like regular salmon tartar.

Maki Mix 3.5/5 - There were enough of us to try all their specialty rolls. Most of them were too similar: a dynamic roll with different fish/fruit on top. Everything just tasted the same to me. Until I found my favourites:
NHL Roll (dynamic roll with unagi on top) 4/5 - The unagi was grilled perfectly. Crunchy around and soft in the middle.
Rainforest Roll (chopped scallops with kiwi on top) 4/5 - The only non-vegetarian roll that didn't come with dynamic roll. Your other choice would be West End Roll (cucumber and avocado roll with kiwi on top)
Sunshine Roll (dynamic roll with mango on top) 3.5/5 - Mango were refreshing but the mango were kinda small. It might be better with a mango sauce.

I was full at this point already. So I just had a taste and ask to take the rest home.
Miso marinated black cod 4/5 - Soft and tender. I liked their brown rice. Great texture and moist. Better than some brown rice I had. I don't remember the salad was served with thai dressing. It was more like balsamic vinaigrette.
Salmon Teriyaki 3.5/5 - I was afraid this will be overcooked and dry. It wasn't even there was not much sauce on this. The black cod was more interesting.

Ice-Cream (Chocolate, Green tea, Mango) - normal and plain. We had so much fun mixing the different flavours. Chocolate green tea > Mango Green tea > Chocolate Mango.
Creme Caramel - The manager/owner? offered this to us because they ran out of the coffee jello. I don't like creme caramel in general because of the texture. This wasn't too sweet which was a good thing.

I was a little hesitated to try out this place because it was owned by Chinese. I'm glad I came. I've been to their sister company Kibo but Honjin had better service. Kibo served fusion food while this one is more traditional sushi. The portion was huge and they could charge $35 for TOY. The only problem might be that people might prefer more popular ones. The manger/owner? always came to check on us. I partly thought coz he overheard us talking about it and saw how much time we spent on arranging the food and taking photos.

Not cheap - but never disappointing!