Restaurant review: Niwa’s menu is inventive — and always changing​on March 27, 2025 at 6:00 pm

Gee has previously worked at Le Crocodile (under Michel Jacob), Farmer’s Apprentice, Kinome and Hawksworth, and it was his grandfather who’d inspired him: “Every weekend, we had Sunday dinner at his house. Looking back, he influenced me.”

Gee’s menu is driven by local farms and even in the dead of winter he’s scouring the Riley Park and Kitsilano farmers markets. “Farms still have produce but by February and March, I really start to long for greens,” he says.

Guests can choose the à la carte or omakase menus. À la carte dishes, which are best shared, range from $8 to $45, and omakase is $85 per person. Some 80 to 90 per cent of diners opt for the latter, Ellis says.

Gee’s food is outside-the-box — none of that protein plus two sides, nothing familiar, no French sauces, just independent thinking and a lean into Japanese flavours. The dishes appear, then disappear forever. Beneath Gee’s calm, there’s a relentless restlessness to keep moving forward.

“I think regulars know that nothing is permanent. They’re never too sad when something disappears because they’ll find something to be excited about when they come back,” he says. “I cook what I want to eat and just hope others do, too. I try to do as little as possible and put all the work into sourcing the best ingredients.”

The first à la carte item I see on the menu is oysters with dahlia vinegar. And another, mochi and mushroom-stuffed cabbage roll with kombu broth, lights curiosity. Kampachi on rice with toasted nori sauce and cured ikura? I salivate.

But I had the omakase, which he starts with little plates of snacks, including a medley of Japanese pickles (always), purple daikon with salted plum salad, miso carrots, and grilled Cache Creek beef liver.

Gee sources local, organic meat and poultry, whole or partly butchered.

“You always pay more for organic. You’re paying for the well-being of the animal,” he says.

Their pork is from a small family-run farm in Langley who wanted to have healthy food for their children. “Everything’s on a small scale and animals are raised naturally.”

Seafood, he says, is whatever’s fresh from his local suppliers.

The snacks were followed by lovely Fanny Bay clams in clean, fresh tasting kampachi bone broth. A Siberian kale and charred cabbage salad is tossed in a roasted sunchoke and koji dressing.

Sunchokes also showed up like a pavé, layered with butter, baked and served with a spicy mustard. An organic striploin steak, grilled rare, from Bradner Farm in Abbotsford, was simply presented with grilled potatoes and greens. It had a clean, fresh beef flavour.

Next up was some snowy white rice topped with house-made kimchi, sliced green onions, house-cured ling cod roe and onsen egg. Mixed all up, the distinct toppings become unified by the fluffed rice. The rice, by the way, was a serendipity for Gee. It’s Koshihikari rice from Nagano, his wife’s hometown.