Review Location:899 Burrard Street,
Vancouver, British Columbia
I'm sure at some point in your life, you've had a hot dog, yes? And I'm sure Japanese cuisine is no stranger to most stomaches. Now what about a Japanese hot dog? Japa Dog (@Japadog) serves exactly what it's name seems to depict : a Japanese Hot Dog. Japa Dog was the idea of Noriki Tamura when he and his wife moved to Vancouver in 2005 from Japan. He originally had a regular normal hot dog stand, but decided he needed to differentiate to gain more customers. Merging the cuisine from his Japanese background into his hot dogs became a huge success, and now there are six locations with more stores to be opened in the U.S.! Anyways, I finally got to try this out as part of my flight layover between Hong Kong and Toronto. Luckily I have lots of family in Vancouver so they took me around to eat for the whole 9 hours I was there!
Japa Dog cart at Burrard Street
Japadog Menu
Lots of options for sausage meat and combination of toppings.
The menu was pretty overwhelming to Rob and I, we just wanted to try them all! Unfortunately since this was just a snack before dinner, we opted only to split one. We ended up choosing the Kurabuto Terimmayo because of it's awesome description:
"What is Kurabuto? Most valuable pork in Japan."
Now how could one pass up the chance to try that?
Patiently waiting for our hot dog to be cooked
Now for the assembly..
There were a considerable amount of people in line, but the wait time was quite reasonable. It was around 6pm when we went.
Kurobuta Terimmayo ($7.25)
Before your eyes is a Kurabuto sausage topped with shredded seaweed, sauteed onions, a savory teriyaki sauce, and mayo. I'm drooling just typing this out.
The Kurabuto pork was incredibly juicy. Did it rise to the claim to being the "most valuable pork in Japan?" I don't know since I didn't eat all that much pork during my trip to Tokyo, but I will say it was one damn good hot dog. I loved the savory combination of the seaweed and mayo.
Japa Dog is definitely not your average hot dog, but I wouldn't say it's something that is incredibly hard to recreate yourself. And come to think of it, $7 is quite pricey for a hot dog! Because of those reasons, I don't know how many times I would go out of my way to have it again after the initial novelty wears off. I would still recommend trying it at least once because it is in fact very very good.
