Li & Jun Japanese restaurant (Coquitlam)

Address: I forgot to grab a card so I can't give you the exact address. It's in the stripmall on the south-east corner of Johnson St. and Glen Dr. *I'll update this as soon as I find out the correct address =p*.

We were actually on the way to another restaurant when we chanced upon this one. Apparently it's in the Soft Opening phase as they have not had their Grand Opening yet.

The first thing we noticed when we walked in was that it smells newly renovated it's got a nice atmosphere, and the decor is very contemporary. The place settings were also not what most of us are used to, nor are the menus.

You might look and say, "What's so different about this setting?". Well, there's usually a small plate for your food, a teacup, soy sauce dispenser and chopstick holder (occasionally). In this place they give you the little dish for the wasabi, that rectangle 'plate', a bowl for your tea (more Chinese style AFAIK) and a little polished rock for your chopsticks... whether or not they wash them after each use is yet to be determined =p when you need soy sauce, you've got to flag down a waiter and ask them to pour it for you.

Oh yeah, then there's the menu. It's neat, the cover is made out of wood... it's a little bulky and awkward to handle. The paper they decided to use didn't help either (it's on the thicker side, heh, reminded me of construction paper). The prices were pretty much average... I didn't take the time to pay attention to much, I was too hungry. But I did notice that the Unagi Don was almost $14 which (in my books) is on the steep side. Everything else was pretty much on par though. One thing that bothered us was the fact that the menu was not very descriptive when it came to many of the items, specifically the combos. For example one combo read something like, 'Comes with 6 pieces sushi' but failed to tell you what kind of sushi you'd be getting.

Presentation, on the other hand, was phenomenal! They actually asked me not to take photos of the food. At first I was a little peeved as to why someone would be so anal about something like that. But then the first dish arrived:


Do we eat it? or frame it? (Sunomono, in case you couldn't guess just by looking at it).
The rest of the food presented was just as impressive. Our salmon sashimi were shaped into 2 roses (6pcs). My kappa/oshinko rolls were laid out with a long piece of grass arced over the top end-to-end. EK and AF ordered a sushi platter or some sort and there were little bite-sized nigiri sushi :D

All-in-all it was a pretty good experience. The Miso soup is also complimentary which was a nice touch. That night we were also fortunate enough to each get a complimentary glass of white wine with our food. A shameless promotion of some sort I'm guessing ;) If you're in the area and you've got a hankering for some Japanese cuisine, give Li & Jun a try, if not for the way the food tastes, then go for the way the food looks! ;)