This is one of those little known places in a big city, that once you visit once, you’re going to wonder why on earth it isn’t more locally famous. We found this spot (well actually, Andy did) as we were doing one of our scrolls on Google Maps, just looking at different areas around the city and the restaurants they offer. The reviews on Kitchen Dada were basically flawless, prices seemed reasonable and the menu looked amazing… so we locked it in!

Kitchen Dada is out the back of Kitsilano, in a slightly less bustling area but still with plenty around. The place has a cosy interior: the bar and kitchen both set up in a way that are visible to all patrons of the staff. Unfortunately, the bar had seemingly been adopted as a bit of a storage area, but it could entirely have been due to Covid-19 and they were just utilising space that no-one could currently sit at.

The drinks list was not great (I hate Japanese beer) and we weren’t in the mood for going all out on bottles of wine, so I settled for a coke and Andy a Sapporo. The staff were all extremely friendly and courteous, probably helped that the restaurant wasn’t overly full.

We ordered up a storm and were expecting great things. Andy doesn’t really like sushi, which is something I have been working on since we moved to Vancouver. The sushi here compared to what we have both had back in New Zealand is miles better, so I think he’s actually starting to come around. We ordered a range of sushi, noodles, fried chicken and dumplings and every dish was delicious. We are both pretty partial to the taste of bonito, so this was a flavour in the noodles that didn’t go unnoticed. However even haters such as ourselves, could tell that it added to the dish overall.

We had ordered so much that we had to get a box to take some of our food home, so we were expecting that the bill was going to be relatively hefty. We were in for an absolute treat when the bill arrived and saw that for the month of March, ALL food was HALF PRICE! What!!? Our bill ended up being basically the same, if not cheaper, if we’d gone to a casual place around the corner – rather than a fancy(ish) date night with my man <3.

This is somewhere that I would 100% recommend if you like Japanese food.