Posh (Richmond)

Posh is one of the few sukiyaki restaurants in Vancouver. In fact, I don't think I know of any other sukiyaki places. Fresh Juice Shop doesn't count. (Read my post on it to find out why.) I've been to Posh once several years ago and the experience was pretty good, so I was excited about trying it again with my TastyGo coupon. The $20 coupon includes $42 worth of all-you-can-eat-and-drink for 2 people, an excellent deal in my opinion. Sukiyaki is a Japanese style hot pot, a method of slow cooking in a shallow pot of sukiyaki soup base and cabbage shreds. The soup base is typically a mixture of soy sauce, mirin and sugar to create a strongly savoury flavour, thereby eliminating the need for dipping sauces.

We were given extra sauce and water to top up our pot, but the water level should be kept relatively low for an authentic sukiyaki experience.

The menu has shrunk over the years, and the AYCE order sheet currently contains only 20 items. The only meat options available are beef and pork, unless you consider fish cake to be meat. Raw egg is not listed on the sheet, but is included as part of the AYCE. Since there are no other dipping sauces (or maybe there are and I just don't know about it), it's a good idea to use a raw egg dip. Meat tastes so much better when it's dipped into ooey gooey raw eggy goodness.

We were debating how many plates of meat to start with when Kish said 10 of each! We were shocked as we were all in the Chinese hot pot mindset, thinking the dishes would be of substantial size. But Kish was right. Each plate of meat consisted of 5 thin strips that were equally thin in thickness and width. Even more sad was the fact that the beef strips were half fat. After a while of meat-cooking, an extremely thick layer of oil (~1 cm) formed on top of the sauce in the pot. We had to get a ladle to scoop out the oil before cooking our veggies.

The veggies, just like the meat, arrived in miniscule portions. Apparently a large order of shingiku (aka "tong ho" in Chinese) is equivalent to 4 shoots. Well at least there was one for each of us. My favourite veggie was the yam which had been deep fried prior to serving. After a short bath in the hot pot, the yam pieces were warm and soft with a slightly chewy skin. The soft tofu and fish cake were pretty tasty too, as their porous textures soaked up all the sauces.

The drinks were below average and incomparable to any bubble tea you could find in Richmond. The lemon lychee (left) was mostly crushed ice, while the strawberry yogurt (right) tasted like children's medicine. Bottomless drinks were included with the meal, but 3 out of the 8 virgin cocktail options were "sold out", coincidentally all 3 of which I would have been interested in trying.

Perhaps it was a mistake to visit on a Saturday night, but the service was just hectic beyond excuse. Forgotten orders, food that took forever to come, stove with no gas... you name it. We had to continually pester the servers until we got what we wanted, otherwise they would just forget about it. It didn't seem like they were capable of handling a restaurant that was filled to capacity. I'll probably go back if there is another deal, but I'm going to pass at the regular price of $18/person plus an extra $5 for bottomless drinks.