Doraku on Dresden

Finally!  Awesome sushi in Halifax!  Yaaieeeeeeee.

Doraku Japanese Cuisine

I am by no means a sushi connoisseur, but I know what I’m used to and I know what I like.  Halifax seems to be crawling with Japanese restaurants, but it’s hard to know where to go.  After two years, I’ve only managed to try a handful of places and although none of those are “bad” I haven’t found one I considered “great” either.  Until last night!  Enter: Doraku…

Based on a review by Kristen at with bite I asked my friend Sarah (fellow West Coast sushi lover) if she’d like to try it out.  We’ve both had a sushi craving for a couple of weeks now, and since FH doesn’t eat sushi I have to rely on my gal pals to be dinner dates.  Sarah was all over it so last night was the night.

First off, love the location.  Easy to find right on Dresden Row, but it still has a cute, off-the-beaten track feeling (the main door is actually almost hidden in a little side alley). 

The room itself is quite small, but features a bar with seating, several small tables, as well as private booths.  Too bad FH doesn’t eat sushi because it’s a perfect little date restaurant!  Dim lighting, cozy quarters, simple but interesting decor.

Now the important stuff…the food!!  Sarah and I both give it two thumbs way up!  Fresh, delicious, savory, beautiful and extremely pleasing.  Neither one of us had a bad thing to say…probably because we were busy eating the whole time…but more likely because the meal was just THAT good.

We started with green tea.  Nice touch that it is actual loose-leaf tea in the cutest little Japanese teapot ever (Sarah even asked our server where it came from…actually from Japan!).

Funny enough, for my meal I ordered almost exactly the same thing that Kristen ordered when she went…great minds I guess.  :)

Spicy tuna roll, Philadelphia roll, 2 sweet shrimp nigiri, and 1 tempura sweet potato nigiri (that just sounded too good to pass up!).  To be blunt…all of it was so.effing.good. 

Hands down BEST Philly roll I’ve ever had.  The cream cheese was light and super creamy…and the cucumber to salmon to cream cheese ratio was perfect…a beautiful combo without one thing overpowering another.

I was surprised by the spicy tuna roll presentation…usually they are inside-out and the spicy mayo is inside.  So I was concerned when I saw the nori and sauce on the outside.  No need for that worry…it was great!  I kept commenting about how soft the nori was.  Too often it’s kind of chewy, but this seemed like it was maybe steamed right before rolling?

The highlight of the meal was the sweet potato nigiri.  I mean, pretty much anything is good if you tempura it…but this was super-yum!  And still warm!!  Smooooshy inside, crispy outside.  And the slice of avocado was a lovely addition.  I tried one of Sarah’s sweet potato rolls too, and it was just as good…if not better than my nigiri. 

And if that wasn’t enough, we HAD to try the dessert.  It’s pretty tough to pass up tempura banana…and last night was no exception.  A new addition to the dessert for me was Black Sesame ice cream.  Our server told us it had a peanut butter-like taste so we knew we had to give it a try.

Deeeeeelish.  Although it does turn your mouth black, so keep your napkin handy.  :)

Overall, we obviously loved Doraku!!  I’ll be hard-pressed to ever go anywhere else in Halifax for sushi in the future.  *drool*