1038 Canada Place
Vancouver BC
For the Dine Out Vancouver 2012 festival, one of the restaurants I chose to try was ORU Restaurant located at the Fairmont Pacific Rim. Comprising of Pan-Asian cuisine, their DOV menu was of the $28 variety and it seemed like a really good deal because their regular menu can be very pricey.
From our table we could see the earth! Haha, no...that's just the gigantic hanging earth globe inside the Vancouver Convention Centre that's across the street.
Onto the food! For my appetizer, I had the Albacore tuna karaage with sesame spinach and bonito broth. Talk about portion control! The claypot was large but there were 2 measly slices of tuna inside. Not enough to whet my appetite! This wasn't what I envisioned kaarage to look like. I sort of expected it to look like chicken kaarage but this looked like tuna tataki only with a breaded crust. Nonethless the tuna was still tasty. The broth smelled really good when the claypot arrived but it was actually kind of bland...
Sorry, I didn't capture the other appetizer that W had because it was a plain looking Caesar salad.
For my main, I ordered the Wild coho salmon with sweet potato puree, wild mushrooms, beet chutney on mushroom dashi. OMG this was so so good. Like YUM-O good! The salmon was moist and I loved the sweet potato puree. It mingled nicely with the savoury mushrooms and dashi. I thought the overall combination worked really well.
Beef shortrib with chimichurri mashed potatoes and roasted root vegetables was the entree that W ordered. I didn't really try a lot of this; only had a bite of the shortrib which I found to be too salty. W said the mashed potato was the highlight of the dish.
Dessert time! I loved the creativity of this one! I had the Caramel praline parfait with candied hazelnuts, cappuccino mousse and dulce de leche. I suppose this was a deconstructed parfait since I expected parfaits to come in a parfait glass. The gelly-like parfait cubes were YUM! Loved all the different textures together - soft, jiggly, crunchy, crispy.
W was left to order the Chocolate torta because I picked the parfait haha... This one consisted of a brownie frangipane, milk chocolate chantilly with cocoa nib nougatine. I tried a small bite but didn't find anything too special about it. I guess after eating my own dessert, this one just couldn't compare!
Aside from the minor disappointment in the tuna kaarage, I thought the execution of the 3 courses were well made, especially considering the $28 price point. Service was pleasant and we were not rushed throughout the meal. Overall, my first visit at ORU was good!
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