By Drunken Noms
Special to the Post

One type of Japanese cuisine that’s harder to find in Vancouver is yōshoku, or the Japanese take on western cuisine, which SPAGHeTEI offers.

The SPAGHeTEI’s Green Garlic Bread is toasted french bread with spinach pesto. The honey gives the bread sweetness to balance the garlic. Although I wasn’t sure about the honey, the flavour really grew on me.

We also had the Pork Chili Oil Bread consisting of chunks of pork in a bath of chili oil with a side of toasted baguette. The meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender with a lot of fairly spicy chili oil. I wasn’t a fan of eating so much oil.

Moving onto mains, we had the spaghetti with Double Meat Sauce. It was the most traditional, but had had Japanese elements. Although made with real tomatoes, the sauce also contained ketchup. It had slightly fatty beef and diced hard boiled egg on top. The pasta was cooked a perfect al dente. This was true for all the pasta dishes we tried.

Another entree was the Spaghetti with Clams featuring a homemade ginger soy sauce topped with mushrooms, pockets of roe, and dry seaweed. The dish was supposed to have scallops, but it didn’t. Nonetheless, this still wound up being my favorite spaghetti. The ginger soy sauce was complex in flavour being salty and sweet with a kick of ginger. I would return for this dish alone.

SPAGHeTEI is also known for their Powder Snow Milk made from shaved frozen milk. The shaved milk was like eating a cloud. We had the matcha and black bean toppings, and the matcha wound up being my favourite.

The food exceeded my expectations. With the exception of the pork chili oil bread, I enjoyed all the dishes I tried. My favourite spaghetti dishes were the most Japanese-influenced. I definitely recommend checking them out.

SPAGHeTEI 

1741 Robson Street, Vancouver, BC

Drunken Noms is composed of two bloggers 'Drunken Master' and 'Food Wench'.  – www.drunkennoms.com