I haven’t had AYCE in awhile.  But there are just some days when you want lots and lots of food for not a lot of money~  On this particular food adventure to find lots of food, iPanda visited E Bei Sushi.  This Japanese AYCE restaurant is located at: 5701 Granville St.  Vancouver, BC.

Dinner at E Bei costs $22.95 for adults and $14.95 for children.  There is an extra charge of one dollar if you visit on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and holidays.  I’m not sure why they charge an extra dollar.  They serve the same food on any day of the week. Hmm…Weird.

What I really like about E Bei is that there is a large selection to chose from.  And once we sat down, the waitress gave us a double sided sheet to mark down our own order.  We were eating with a large group of friends and got to try lots of different dishes.

My favourite sashimi is the tuna tataki.  This is tuna that has been seared on the outside on a hot cast iron pan.  This dish is usually served with a sour sauce similar to the one you would find in Japanese green salads.

I enjoyed the salmon sashimi and octopus sashimi as well because they were fairly fresh.  E Bei is nice because they don’t hesitate when giving their customers their food.  I’ve had AYCE dinners where only half of what we ordered arrived at the table~!

Below are some of the other dishes that we tried!

Spinach with peanut butter sauce:  the sauce was a bit thick and sticky.  I love peanut butter, but I was a bit overwhelmed by this because there was so much!

Grilled squid: we always order these at AYCE because they can be hard to make at home.

Chopped scallop cone: my all-time favourite!!!  I love these.  They had an equal portion of chopped scallop and rice.  This is good because some restaurants put so much rice in it that it feels like they are trying to stuff their customers full of rice!

We also ordered a variety of sushi.  This is the eel, geoduck and toro.  I liked the toro and geoduck a lot.  However, not everyone is used to geoduck because it can be a bit crunchy.  On the other hand, Toro is tuna belly and is soft and fatty.

Oyster motoyaki~  The oysters were kind of small and the sauce was a bit oily (because of the mayonnaise)

Ribs – these were super juicy.  I love the sauce that they use to marinate these because it is a bit sweet with the taste of honey.

The green shrimp salad was average.  However, it was a good start to the meal because it was sour and salad is less filling than the other dishes.

Deep fried whitebait~  I don’t like eating these because they are a bit oily.  There are controversies surrounding how people should eat these little fishies.  Some people claim that you can eat the entire fish while others believe that you should only eat the middle.  These ones at E Bei fried for too long because they had shrivelled up a bit.

Deep Fried Scallops~  Love these little things.  Even though they aren’t real scallops, they sure taste like it.  They make great party food too.

In addition, we also had fried chicken wings, gyoza and edamame.  Nothing special about these three dishes.  

And last but not least, we finished the meal with the mango pudding.  This was not good and I didn’t finish it.  It tasted more like a watered down jello than a pudding.

We had a good dinner at E Bei.  I don’t normally expect too much from AYCE Japanese restaurants.  However, all the expectations of an AYCE restaurant eating experience was met.  Everything that we ordered arrived promptly.  The service was quick and friendly.  The finished plates were quickly cleared away to make room for new dishes.  Overall, I think E Bei is up to standard with other Japanese AYCE restaurants like Richmond Sushi and Kingsway Sushi.  The only negative part of the night is that there is limited parking next to the restaurant and you have to pay for it.  Apart from that, yummmmm…..chopped scallop cones!!!

E Bei Japanese

Telephone Number: (604) 263-2326

Address: 5701 Granville St, Vancouver, BC