Yuki Aida has been a student - in one way or another - for most of her life.
Nearly a decade ago, and post-divorce, Aida's quest for learning found her in the kitchens of the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts (PICA), where she embarked on the path to becoming a chef. In her native Japan, before moving to Canada 36 years ago, Aida had been exploring an entirely different career while a student in art school.
Aida is neither a chef nor an artist by trade, yet she has managed to meld those worlds beautifully in her professional life. The North Vancouver resident owns Sushi Mahana, the omakase-style modern Japanese restaurant that opened in January 2023 in Lower Lonsdale. She greets her guests in the intimate foyer, wearing a traditional kimono, welcoming them to her Tokyo-inspired contemporary sushi bar for an immersive - and delicious - sushi dining experience.
The restaurant, which offers two nightly seatings for eight to 10 guests at an elegant and understated sushi bar for a $250 per person premium omakase (chef's choice) menu, represents the culmination of Aida's relentless pursuit of knowledge and her desire to create something unique and sophisticated for people to enjoy and feel connected to.
A chance meeting led to her opening a sushi restaurant
Aida says "all the bits of things" she had pursued but not seen through remained present in her thoughts. "All of what was 'unfinished' stayed with me," the restaurateur tells V.I.A. by phone. It was a chance meeting with Vancouver sushi chef Hiroshi Hoshiko at a wedding reception she'd organized that sealed her fate.
Hoshiko, who trained in Kyushu, Japan before moving to Vancouver to work as a sushi chef for Miku, had shifted to a take-out sushi operation during the pandemic. He approached Aida with a proposal of sorts: Did she want to own a sushi bar?
"He saw something in me that I did not really see in myself," recalls Aida, who says she has always enjoyed sushi but hadn't considered it as a business. Still, she was intrigued by the idea and bolstered by Hoshiko. So Aida did what she knew how to do: She learned.
"I just Googled it all," she says, laughing, describing all the various research tasks that came with pursuing the goal of opening a restaurant in Metro Vancouver, from licenses to lawyers.
Choosing a location was an early and significant hurdle. Priced out of properties in Vancouver hot zones, like Robson Street, Aida turned to her own community on the North Shore, which she says "gives kind of Brooklyn vibes."
"I really love the feel of it," she continues. "It's not a big city, it's a little tucked away - a special secret place where people can come," Aida adds, pointing out options for Vancouverites on the other side of the inlet who might want to "take the SeaBus, stroll the Shipyards" and "make a day out of" a trip to North Vancouver.
Once the space on West Third was locked down for Sushi Mahana, Aida and the team she'd assembled got to work on the design.
Sushi Mahana evokes a Tokyo dining experience by design
Aida describes the restaurant venue as a "blank canvas," to which she applied several aesthetic principles to bring to life her vision for the kind of space she wanted to create.
"I'm from Tokyo and I wanted to open a sushi bar that could be found in Tokyo," Aida explains. Her goal was to make the interior modern with several traditional elements and to celebrate what can be found in a space where the two forces are juxtaposed. To that end, while guests pass through noren, the traditional curtains that separate the entrance from the dining room in Japanese restaurants, they are ushered into a minimalist space with striking features.
There are seasonal ikebana floral arrangements and vintage dishware, and the walls were embellished with a charcoal treatment made from burnt wood. Naturally, when the issue of how to avoid everyone in the room getting covered in soot arose, Aida jumped into student mode and, along with the designer, did some troubleshooting to land on an appropriate sealant. Problem solved.
When it came to crafting the menu, Aida gave Hoshiko the reins, as a gallerist would for a painter: "He's the artist. He creates beautiful paintings and it's up to me find an audience."
What is Kyushu-style sushi?
Based on Hoshiko's training, the Mahana team settled on distinguishing themselves from Vancouver's crowded sushi scene by offering Kyushu-style food, meaning additional ingredients are used to enhance the flavours of the fish.
Working closely with local and global suppliers, Sushi Mahana prides itself on its impeccable ingredients; during a recent dinner service, a guest's inquiry about a particular kind of ginger resulted in one of the chefs bringing out the whole bulb and stem from the kitchen, bought just that morning at the West End Farmers' Market, for everyone to take a closer look at.
The omakase menu is about 26 courses, each meticulously prepared in the small space enclosed on two sides by the sushi bar in full view of the diners. Hoshiko deftly scoops the rice for each portion of carefully sliced nigiri, while his sous-chef applies garnishes. Meanwhile, another sous chef focuses on the intermediary dishes, such as fresh scallops with muscat grapes or strands of spaghetti squash with sesame and fresh B.C. peaches - all designed to showcase the stunning vegetables found regionally.
Bite after bite of nigiri - botan ebi (spot prawn), aji (horse mackerel), masunosuke (king salmon) among the 17 or so servings of sushi - are presented by hand to each guest individually with an explanation of what the item is.
The chefs, who are the essence of calm, focused, and skilled, also manage to entertain. Hoshiko face settles into a nearly mischievous grin as he torches one side of a cube of tamago (egg omelet) for one of the final courses. Moments earlier, he coated the slices of anago (seawater eel) with a brushstroke of sauce before putting on a magician-like show of shooting a spark of garnish onto each piece, to everyone's delight.
Storytelling and creating memorable connections part of the dining experience
One of the unique aspects of the Sushi Mahana meal experience is the focus on storytelling. Aida says she was inspired by a sushi chef in Tokyo who thoughtfully arranged his dishes to tell a story. Unsurprisingly, the inquisitive Aida took that encounter as an opportunity to ask plenty of questions about its design and adopted his approach to the Mahana experience.
Aida believes that dining at Mahana is a form of subtle, psychologically-influenced theatre, where guests create memories through their culinary experiences.
Whereas some sushi restaurants might be overtly theatrical, or lean into deploying flashy adornments that might stand in for substance, Aida sees Mahana as more sophisticated and restrained in its approach. The restaurant aims to draw in customers who are fans of sushi and who are comfortable spending their money - even if they have saved up for it - on a quality experience that could be found in Japan.
Her desire is also to forge connections between diners and the food and staff, creating an ambiance that mirrors the subtlety and grace of Japanese culture.
"We are different because it's not just that we welcome guests to have sushi and send them home," elaborates Aida. "I want to create a whole experience of fine sushi dining that I have experienced in Japan." The experience begins not when the kimono-clad hostess greets you, but instead when you make your reservation and have the first pangs of excitement for the meal. Once you're there, every element of the evening draws you in, completely.
"I want people to be submerged in it," says Aida.
Could Sushi Mahana earn a Michelin star?
There is one guest, however, that Mahana can't get, and that's a Michelin Guide judge. It comes down to geography; the Michelin Guide is in Vancouver through the support of Tourism Vancouver, which means only restaurants in Vancouver proper are eligible for recognition by the vaunted publication. The guide's only star addition for 2023, building on its inaugural list of eight Vancouver restaurant one-star awardees in 2022, was Okeya Kyuijiro, the Yaletown omakase sushi bar with a price tag of $325 per person.
Aida, however, refuses to be discouraged by Mahana's ineligibility for the Michelin Guide for Vancouver. A Michelin Guide nod is what she calls "an outcome."
Now in the role of restaurateur, Aida has graduated from a perpetual student to a true leader as she reminds the talented and dedicated team she's assembled of their shared mission.
"The reason why we started a sushi bar is to create this wonderful experience, to bring in people and introduce the people of North Vancouver to what we do," Aida explains. "We didn't open a sushi restaurant to get a Michelin star."
Instead, Aida is confident Sushi Mahana exists for a deeper purpose.
"To me, it's to bring authenticity," Aida adds. "That means so much to me."
Sushi Mahana is located at 175 3rd St W in North Vancouver. Dinner is served Wednesday through Sunday with seatings at 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and reservations are required. Follow @SushiMahana on Instagram.
Watch: Omakase experience at Sushi Mahana in North Vancouver
@forkingawesomevia One of the best sushi restaurants near Vancouver I’ve been to! Here’s where to go for a special occasion dinner for beautiful omakase sushi. #forkingawesome #northvancouver #vancouverbc #sushi #omakase🎙️@LindsayWR ♬ Vlog Video work Fashionable BGM(847726) - Tsuyoshi_san
Find more delicious Vancouver food and drink video stories by following VIA's Forking Awesome TikTok account, @forkingawesomevancouver Instagram, and signing up for our Forking Awesome newsletter.
