Tucked away behind a gas station on the corner of Edmonton Trail and First Avenue N.E. you’d be forgiven if you got lost trying to find Daruma. The exterior of the strip mall where the restaurant is located is a little rundown but the interior is clean and refined with simple Japanese touches.
Unlike most Japanese restaurants in Calgary Daruma does not specialize in sushi nor does it specialize in the latest trend ramen. Instead signs in the restaurant’s windows boast “tapas.” In Japan izakayas are popular places for people to hang out after work and share tapa-like dishes over beer and sake. However Daruma closes at 9 p.m. keeping us from enjoying ourselves too much.
My sister and I slipped into Daruma just an hour before close a few weeks ago and ordered a few tapas and some sushi. The menu features a lot of items that are not often seen in other Japanese restaurants in town; fortunately the menu also has a lot of photos so it’s easy to point and choose with the most popular items pictured on the front page.
The menu features a lot of items that are not often seen in other Japanese restaurants in town; fortunately the menu also has a lot of photos so it’s easy to point and choose
My sister insisted that we get takoyaki ($6.50) one of her favourite foods. A popular street food in Japan it’s pastry stuffed with octopus that’s cooked in a special pan giving it a distinctive round shape. The takoyaki at Daruma is presented colourfully — the brown balls are served in an escargot dish with each well filled with sweet takoyaki sauce. The whole plate is drizzled with Japanese mayo and sprinkled with green onion red pickled ginger and dried bonito flakes. The takoyaki had hot and crispy skin that gave way to a soft slightly gooey centre though the flavour was overwhelmed by the takoyaki sauce and the piece of tako (octopus) that was supposed to be nestled in each ball was sometimes so small that you could barely taste it.
My pick was the age nasu ($4.50) or deep-fried eggplant in tempura sauce. I’d originally thought that the eggplant would be battered but instead the dish highlights the soft texture of the eggplant which soaks up the gentle sweet-savoury flavour of the tempura sauce.
We splurged on the baked oysters ($12) which had a satisfying meaty texture covered in a tangy Japanese mayo-and-cheese sauce. To balance out the richness and meet our daily quota of greens we also shared a green salad ($5 for large). Unlike the usual iceberg-lettuce-with-slices-of-pale-tomato affair Daruma’s green salad is filled with radish slices chunks of red pepper tomato wedges asparagus stalks and two orange wedges cut to look like bunny rabbits. So cute!
For sushi we shared the dragon roll ($16.50) and a few pieces of toro (fatty tuna $3 each). At Daruma you have the option of getting any nigiri (the non-roll sushi) aburi or charred for an extra 50 cents. The regular toro was melt-in-your-mouth with a delicate flavour while the aburi version added some texture as the surface of the fish is cooked and a gentle smoky flavour.
The dragon roll consisted of crunchy sweet yam tempura with a bit of tobiko (flying fish roe) for just a hint of savouriness. I thought the use of tobiko was innovative — even if the tempura starts losing its crunch you still get a bit of texture as the little fish roe pop in your mouth. The roll itself was topped with barbecue eel and avocado giving it its dragon-like appearance.
For dessert we had my favourite food — black sesame ice cream ($3). I would’ve been fine with the ice cream alone but it was served with balls of whipped cream and a few more orange-wedge bunnies which unfortunately took away from the ice cream’s rich and nutty flavour.
Still I enjoyed my visit to Daruma — the service was friendly with chef/owner Atsushi Hayashi formerly of Tokyo Garden making sushi at the back and quietly running the show. I can’t wait to go back and try some more new-to-me dishes or at least get my fill of black sesame ice cream.
