Shizen Ya

Shizen Ya is a great place for a reasonably priced, healthy, and delicious meal. My friend and I shared a real crab California roll, salmon avocado roll, tuna avocado roll, and beef teriyaki lunch special. The teriyaki was good, but not amazing. However, I really liked all of the sushi rolls and wish more places would serve sushi with brown rice.

The lunch specials are a great deal. At dinner time I love their seafood salads, you get a massive amount and fantastic quality. The rice is excellent, the ingredients are fantastic. They have a great pot of gobo tea. The service is always lovely.

It’s OK, service was very slow, they had a new trainee that did not speak or understand any English the miso soup was ok, tasted more like it was watered down. Would I eat here again, I don’t think so.

Hands down the best Sushi restaurant in this part of town. Servers are friendly and attentive, there is always water and tea on the table (rare for a Japanese restaurant), and the food is fresh and fast. Highly recommend the tofu avocado salad, even if you don’t like tofu like me! These guys deserve your money.

I had high hopes for this place. This place tries to bill itself as a health conscious Japanese place, with the brown rice and organic food. I wish they ditched the organic nonsense, as that’s just a fad scientifically illiterate people fall for — it just makes the food way more expensive. The atmosphere is very pleasant, with soft music, good and quick service, and a clean interior. The food quality is average — certainly not any better than your average Vancouver restaurant, and I’d say the portions are on the small side. And given that this place is very pricy, I don’t think it’s good value for your food. Because of that, I won’t be back.

What should have been a 10 minutes wait became a half an hour wait. You can make reservations here though. Service is good. Food is pretty yummy for healthy food. It veers towards the healthy vegetarian path with brown rice, quinoa and seafood. However, for those who prefer some meat on their plate, they have the option of chicken available. I might come again, but I think I’ll make a reservation first.

I work in the film industry and my job often requires working long hours and sometimes even all night. This means that I order takeout at least 1 – 2 times a week (often more) and at least 1 night a week is usually sushi takeout.
I’ve tried all kinds of sushi places all over Vancouver and Shizen Ya’s brown rice sushi is the cleanest and healthiest sushi in Vancouver that I’ve found so far. The quality of the fish is consistently outstanding and the staff are happy to provide recommendations based on your dietary needs. I wholeheartedly recommend Shizen Ya to anyone who cares about eating properly. I find the prices to be quite reasonable as well: a typical order for 2 people comes to less than $ 40 including tax. Of course it depends on what you order, but my order is around $ 36 for 2 people.

My wife and I are health nuts. We care about what we eat and put into our bodies, and we both love sushi. So before visiting Vancouver, I did some research on healthy sushi places and stumbled upon this gem. First thing that I was pretty happy with was the free parking at the back of the restaurants. It’s the little things like this that sometimes makes me want to come back to certain places. When we walked in, we were immediately greeted by our waitress who was friendly and was very accommodating with the modifications we were making (ie: no mayo, extra veggies). The food came out FAST, and super delicious. I’d almost say it is the best sushi place I’ve ever had. We ate there EVERY NIGHT we stayed in Vancouver. I’d suggest… anything on the menu :) Especially the Sakura Blossom Sushi.

If you are looking for a place with vegetarian, gluten free, wild rice or brown rice options and oceanwise, then this is the place for you. If not, then I would say you should venture a try. Their cherry blossom roll is the best and it is refreshening, delicious and really well done. I like their sashimi and the atmosphere at both their downtown and broadway locations. I especially like their quinoa tofu salad and this is a must order when you are there.
I would definitely say that the service is always good. Though you have to wait quite a bit for any seats in the downtown location due to their limited seating so if you are a bigger group then go to the broadway one or go put your name down earlier and then walk around.

This sushi place tastes phenomenal. I love how they use brown rice and it’s organic. Real crab is used in the California rolls. The food always tastes fresh and nutritional. The cost is reasonable considering the ingredients used. I ordered once from the downtown location and it didn’t have the same quality it seemed.
The reason that I didn’t give 5 stars is because we arrived at 9:35 pm on a Saturday night and were told the kitchen was closed. The seating area was still open for the remaining customers. However, they advertise that the restaurant is open until 10 pm on Saturdays. So they either need to keep the kitchen open until 10 pm, or close the restaurant at 9:30 pm.

OMG good and healthy! So long as you don’t pig out outrageously and eat enough for six people, then you can keep it healthy. I love their Chirashi Bowl with Brown Rice and their salads are fantastic too. Their California Roll is made with REAL crab — so good! Their Salmon Sashimi is choice. Both locations rock and did I mention that it’s all healthy? Vegetarian and vegan individuals can all find lots of goodies to feed their souls here too!

Amazing, healthy sushi! Sometimes service can be slow, but only if they’re super busy which is understandable. Highly recommend, favourite spot of mine!

My naturopath prescribed a rather restrictive diet for me to follow for the next 4 weeks, making dining out a near impossible feat.
Thankfully, Shizen Ya specializes in one of the few things a I CAN EAT — brown rice sushi. Only yesterday I ate somewhere else where their brown rice was horribly dry, hard, and unenjoyable. You can really tell that at Shizen Ya, they put effort into making good brown rice. While it will (in my personal opinion) never live up to good ol’ white sushi rice, it’s the best brown rice alternative I have tried.
They are definitely a health and ingredient-​focused establishment, and their menu is a testament to that — they even mention which dishes contain mayonnaise, and since I cannot eat eggs (for the time being), it sure made ordering a breeze. That being said, it may not be for everyone, but it’s a Godsend for those of us who have to make some difficult dietary choices.
My only criticism was for having to wait almost 15 minutes for someone to take our food and drink order even though there was only a table of 3, a deuce, and solo diner in the restaurant apart from our table of two.
Overall a solid 3.5

This was one of two places I fell in love with while in the area for a work week. Flavorful and healthy are hard to find in this area.
The small restaurant is fast, affordable, delicious. The Wild Rice & Tofu Salad is something special. I had it on two different lunch visits.

Brown rice sushi with flavours. Lots of vegan options including vegan pudding. Super friendly staff. Delicious tea. This is our go-​to sushi place and luckily it is not far from our house. Score!

The food was absolutely delicious and the customer service was amazing. It’s a bit pricey but you get the quality and quantity you pay for, which is very rare nowadays. This place is a must for vegetarians.
The dumplings had fillings with great texture and I couldn’t stop eating the Bomber roll.
The only regret I have is getting the chicken udon as it was very bland and the ingredients were mediocre. It was meant to be home-​styled and I guess that’s not what I really like.

Since I love the other Shizen Ya so much I had to try this location. This one has more seats set in a more traditional square dining room (as opposed to the short narrow space of the downtown location). The menu seems to be the same so I opted for a few different items since I’d already eaten at the other location during my trip. I ordered:
* SALMON NIGIRI — I cannot get enough of the wild sockeye salmon here!
* NEGITORO ROLL — A cut roll with chopped tuna belly and green onions.
* TOFU AND AVOCADO SALAD — Organic tofu and avocado topped with sprouts, tomatoes, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds with a black sesame sauce.
The ingredients are so fresh. Another great (and healthy) meal at Shizen Ya! I like that this place is ideal for pescatarians and vegetarians alike, and that it’s also affordable.

Brown Rice sushi made right. The seafood is oceanwise and very fresh. They use sockeye salmon and real crab meat in anything that contains it. The place is quite cozy and gets extremely busy during lunch so I would recommend making reservations.
Blossom roll is beautifully presented with nice touches of different sauces. Fresh avocado and sockeye salmon on top with a crunch of cucumber.
Toro tataki nigiri is amazing with fried garlic, green onions, lightly seared toro and a touch of sweet soy sauce to put it all together.
The cooked food isn’t in their expertise at all. I haven’t been able to find one decent plate to enjoy.
The waitress are quick and friendly, but just a bit too fast. My plates were all removed while I had just stuffed the last piece of blossom roll in my mouth. I really wanted that ginger to end my meal!

3 ½ stars. This is a nice little place that has organic and Oceanwise items. Due to this, it may not be for everyone. They try to be healthy so some items are not as flavorful as regular Japanese items. They use brown rice which I like but it gives a different texture and taste so if you’re not used to brown rice, you may not like it.
The miso soup is a little blander than other sushi places, but its still good. The sashimi I got was fresh and was really good. Usually I like having wasabi and soya sauce but for these, I barely dipped them in or used a lot of wasabi.
I ordered the Triple Attack Brown rice bowl and negitoro roll. The sashimi on the rice bowl was fresh and had good texture. The brown rice was good too, of course it had different taste to white rice. There was a sauce in the rice that gave a little better flavor than standard brown rice. The negitoro roll was smaller than other places but the tuna belly was tender, fresh and light.
I like this location more than the downtown one. I’ll come back and try different items and update review later.

[Brown Rice Sushi]
Needed a quick dinner on Broadway and somehow ended up here at ShizenYa. This place has many many organic vegetarian, oceanwise, and gluten-​free options so if you’re on that train, this could be the stop for you. Personally, I’m a carnivore — if I had to, I’d cut out veggies from my diet than meat which is why I was surprised to have ended up here. However, there are some excellent options that satisfied my meat tooth.
I started with a Natural bomber roll which was basically a dynamite roll with avocado ontop. The organic veggies, whole wheat tempura, and brown rice were unexpectedly tasty. Using brown rice gave the sushi a different texture and taste but in a good way. The next roll was the spicy tuna. Fresh fish and avocado really combined well with the brown rice. To top it off, I shared a Chicken curry served with brown rice. Perhaps it was the beans but it had a texture similar to chili. The chicken cooked well but the flavor of the curry combined with the brown rice, I wasn’t the biggest fan of this dish. I appreciate that they were trying to take a different spin on Japanese curry but this one didn’t quite work. The curry also came with a side of tuna and salmon sashimi (very fresh) and a prawn sunomono made with whole wheat vermicelli. The vinegar in the sunomono was laced with balsamic for a slightly sweeter taste (I’m a sucker for balsamic).
Prices are a little higher given the fact they use fresh, organic ingredients to provide some excellent vegetarian and gluten-​free options. The atmosphere and service are excellent and there’s even free parking in the back. I enjoyed my meal here and I wouldn’t hesitate to take my vegetarian friends here.