News

Strawberry Cones Pizza and Pasta, with its brightly coloured logo and cartoon packaging, is the Hello Kitty of the pizza world.

Even the name - strawberry represents the customer (delicate and in need of attention); cones represent success - is annoyingly cutesy pootsie.

When the Japanese chain restaurant opened its first overseas store in Richmond's Aberdeen Centre last December, the buzz was almost as big as when Beard Papa's - home of the "world's best cream puffs" - stormed the same food court 18 months ago and smashed the company's North American records for first-month sales.

Strawberry Cones, alas, is no Beard Papa's.

When we rock up to the counter, there are no lineups or customers. We are greeted by an animated video commercial, starring the company's singing-dancing imo mochi mascots. Imo mochi, one of Strawberry Cones' signature toppings, are glutinous potato balls that look like marshmallows.

The menu, which includes carbonara chicken pasta and potato egg salad pizza, might sound bizarre to some. But these are actually quite common flavours for yoshoku cuisine (the well-established Japanese take on Western comfort foods).

We give the pasta a pass. The sauces are dispensed out of counter-top containers that look like super-automatic coffee machines.

And then we sit down to wait, for about 20 minutes. Unless you're ordering a pre-cooked slice, don't expect to be served in a hurry. This is not exactly fast food.

The Mochimo Smile ($14.76 for a medium) is sampler-style pizza, topped with four of the restaurant's most popular flavour combinations. It comes on a doughy rice-flour crust, edged with sticky but surprisingly bland imo mochi balls drizzled in an orange sauce that tastes like Cheez Whiz.

The toppings - premium lobster, spicy shrimp, habanero salsa and Hokkaido potato tuna - are difficult to distinguish, but all disgusting.

The seafood tastes canned. The sausage is incredibly salty. The sauces are goopy. The zucchini is grey. The parsley flakes are so bright they look radioactive. The potato salad is made with Japanese mayo that tastes more sweet than sour.

The Teriyaki Mochi Chicken ($8.57 for a small) is slightly more palatable - but only just. The chicken has a strange chalky texture and the teriyaki sauce is sweet (more like hoisin).

Our pizza is missing the nori shreds that are advertised in the photos. But it does come with little packages of green pizza spice (tasteless) and a hot Tabasco-like sauce (pleasantly numbing).

I suppose Strawberry Cones might appeal to families with indiscriminating children. But if they were my kids, I wouldn't want to risk ruining their developing taste buds.

Fortunately, all is not lost. In the quest for good Japanese pizza, our search turns to the elusive okonomiyaki, a savoury pancake also known as Japanese pizza partly because it is served cut in wedges.

In Japanese, okonomi means "what you like" and yaki means "grilled." So a traditional okonomiyaki restaurant is a cook-it-yourself establishment where customers are presented with the raw ingredients (flour batter, grated yam, dashi, eggs, shredded cabbage and a mix of meat, vegetable or seafood), which they grill themselves at tables fitted with special teppan hot plates.

After doing some online research, we find ourselves at the Clubhouse Japanese Restaurant in the industrial fringes of West Second Avenue.

Now this place is truly bizarre. The tall warehouse walls are covered in kitschy golf-course murals, with big boughs of twigs and twinkling lights dangling from the vaulted ceiling.

A couple of years ago, the original owner (a golf aficionado who also founded the eclectic The Eatery on West Broadway) sold the restaurant to a loyal employee, a hyperactive young woman named Karen, who is serving us tonight.

"We have the best okonomiyaki in Vancouver," she tells us, pausing for a rare breath as she scampers madly around the restaurant, which also serves hot pots, yaki udon, tempura, sushi and all sorts of exotic-sounding rolls.

"I didn't say that," she modestly clarifies. "But that's what everyone tells me. You have the best, best, best Japanese pizza!"

The menu lists 17 different types of pancakes, with several side garnishes that include kimchi, mochi and fried soba noodles. And they're cooked in the kitchen. (There are no grill-it-yourself establishments in Vancouver, at least not that I could find).

Mix mushrooms ($9.95 for a small serving) tastes more of cabbage than mushroom. Chicken katsu ($10.95) is stuffed with chopped pieces of breaded chicken cutlet.

Both come with a spatula for slicing and are topped with a thick spread of okonomiyaki sauce (like Worcestershire, but sweeter), swirls of vinegary Japanese mayonnaise, a clump of pickled ginger and a sprinkling of seaweed flakes.

They are both served Osaka-style, fried crispy on both sides with the ingredients mixed right into the batter. The restaurant also makes a thicker, Hiroshima-style pancake (the ingredients are sandwiched between two layers of batter, rather than mixed). The menu, however, doesn't distinguish which is which.

The ingredients are much fresher than those used at Strawberry Cones and the combinations are a lot less jarring, though I'd still say okonomiyaki is an acquired taste.

But if you're looking for a fun, offbeat place to take the kids (or the young at heart), the Clubhouse certainly makes for an interesting detour.

Strawberry Cones Pizza and Pasta: Aberdeen Centre, 4151 Hazelbridge Way, Richmond: 604-295-6693. Clubhouse Japanese Restaurant: 255 West 2nd Ave.; 604-879-8998

agill@globeandmail.com