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| - Hanmoto is a new spot that serves up raw and hot items in izakaya style! The portions are snack sized and are meant for sharing.
The spot is nestled away on Lakeview and the inside is VERY small. There are two larger picnic tables that can accommodate a bigger group but then there's just a few smaller two-seaters and bar stools in the rest of the space. It is dim-lit, art-grunge and the music is pumping (hip hop).
The menu is small and carries hot items, cold/raw items, cocktails and beer. We ordered 85% of the menu to share between the 4 of us.
Highlights:
Dyno Wings - 2 jumbo deboned chicken wings stuffed with pork dumpling and glazed with some ridiculously tasty sauce! A definite winner!
Moto bun - This is Japanese curry chicken with slaw on a bun! Very flavourful and messy, hard to cut in half so if you're hungry order one of these to yourself.
Nasu Dengaku - Japanese eggplant, fried beets and miso sauce. BEST dish on the menu which was a shocker. I don't even care for eggplant but this dish has an explosion of texture and flavourful, that miso special sauce is DELICIOUS!!!
Miso Ice cream - Shiro Miso icecream in a slab dusted with nori powder and puff rice balls. This was a nice subtle flavour. Not too sweet and the rice balls gave it a nice crunch. A nice treat to split.
Basically everything we tried was really good, the only thing I didn't care for was the shishitso peppers. Usually I love these peppers at Spanish restaurants but they were quite flavourless here. They topped the peppers with bontio flakes which were wayyyyyy too fishy tasting, we barely finished this dish between 4 people.
The large salmon dish wasn't really worth it either. Seemed like there was not enough meat in the salmon and it was hard to pick at and they just dumped a load of coleslaw on top. The other salmon dish was excellent though, the aburi salmon!
Cocktails looked good, but were pricey. I had a beer instead. The beer list is short but some decent options.
Great place, would go back just for those wings and eggplant, mmmmmmm!
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