Bar Maumi is the Complete Omakase Package in Vancouver – FINALLY!

Over the past few years, the sushi scene in Vancouver has steadily improved. However, there was never one that had the complete package. Tetsu has the best sushi, but lacks atmosphere, Bar Maumi lacked an alcohol permit, Okeya is not just sushi and so on. Until now! I recently had dinner at Bar Maumi’s new location on Robson street. The new location is a significant improvement from the previous location on Davie. To me, walking into a high end omakase restaurant should make you fee like you are walking into a sacred temple. This ticks that box:

The restaurant only offers one seating at 6PM every night. They did this to avoid late commers in the first seating delaying the second seating. There are 17 seats around a sushi bar with very modern, yet minimalist Japanese setting. I think it is very well done. Upon walking in, I saw some of the fish already prepped for the first round of nigiri.

The meal starts with 13 pieces of nigiri, selected by the chef, and then you can add more of whatever is on hand to your order. They also now have sake and other alcohol which was lacking in their previous location. Here was the omakase menu the night I went.

Here was the food:

After this initial set, the chef starts prepping for round 2.

This ended the chef’s omakase portion of the meal. We added a few more pieces after that including: local uni, sea perch, suzuki, and tomago (in addition to repeating a few from the omakase that we loved).

…and we also added a couple desserts…

A couple things to note:

Cost – the cost is relatively cheaper than other omakse in the city ($135)

Service – In the front, I only saw the sushi chef and his wife who takes additional orders and serves drinks. Therefore, initial drink orders and even water are slow to come out. We did not get anything to drink until maybe one or two pieces of sushi were already being served. The meal will also take about 2 hours+, but it doesn’t seem long as you are always watching him prep or serve. However, if you have already been a few times, or are in a rush, this may affect your decision to come back.

Food – The sushi is very good. The fish is served with very little to no further processing (for example, there are no aburi/torched pieces). I like this very clean style of letting the ingredients speak for themselves. The nori and soy sauce are of very high quality. In fact, I believe the chef uses multiple types of soy sauce, depending on the piece. Some of the soy had an amazing nori flavor. The anago sauce had tons of umami. However, I would skip dessert.

The composition of the meal is not typical as tamago is not served at the end (though you can add it), and neither is a handroll.

Overall, this was a very very good meal, although I feel Tetsu’s sushi is still slightly better, the new restaurant setting, combined with the high quality omakase, make this the best choice in some circumstances like if you were on a nice date or taking out clients/people from out of town. I would definitely return and highly recommend.