The scope of Vancouver's impressive Japanese culinary scene has expanded yet again with the recent debut of a new café where the humble onigiri is elevated to star status.
A grab-and-go staple, onigiri are bundles of rice, usually compacted into ball or triangle shapes with various fillings and wrapped in nori (seaweed) for perfect portability. Though it calls to mind sushi - and in this case comes from a Vancouver food business that does sushi and sashimi - onigiri is a category of its own, and worthy of its own cafe.
The Onigiri Café, which opened at the end of March, is the venture of Takenaka, a food truck that debuted in spring 2020. Based at Coho Commissary, Takenaka is behind some of the city's most beautiful, fresh, and delicious Japanese bento boxes and chirashi bowls. When Coho Coffee moved out of the cafe space, Takenaka took over and is now creating a daytime menu with onigiri as the focal point.
While you can order onigiri with an array of fillings as a la carte items, the best way to experience Takenaka's cafe menu is to try one of their combination plates. The cafe has breakfast and lunch bento box-style combos that feature a plain onigiri along with rotating side dishes (for example cold soba noodles with tobiko and egg), their green salad with housemade dressing, and bottomless miso soup for $10 (8-11 a.m.) and all the same plus a main dish for $21 at lunch (11 a.m.-3 p.m.).
Main dishes include Takenaka's beautiful and delicious sushi items, like aburi selections or chirashi bowls, or beef curry with rice.
When it comes to the onigiri, Takenaka's creations are ample and tasty. You can go as simple as pickled daikon or tuna mayo, or as deluxe as sea urchin with crab meat. Some fun selections - perfect for breakfast, as it happens - are the cured egg yolk, which is creamy and rich, and the unagi cheese, which is like an onigiri riff on a breakfast sandwich, hitting all the right notes of salty, sweet, eggy, and cheesy.
It's an exciting time for Takenaka as the indie Japanese restaurant operation expands not only with the Coho Commissary space's Onigiri Cafe (1370 E Georgia St), but also with news they will be opening up an outpost in the revamped Lonsdale Quay.
Watch: Vancouver's new onigiri cafe with amazing meal deals
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