A new Japanese Korean restaurant on 82 Avenue in Edmonton caught my eye a few weeks ago and last week we finally had a chance to stop by for lunch. I have to be honest: I judged Sabu by its exterior and didn’t have high hopes. The restaurant is in the old Jugs Pub location in what used to be (I think?) a Pizza Hut originally. So, the exterior is not all that enticing, but thankfully, the new owners have done wonders inside.

Items on the menu are what you might expect of any place offering Japanese food in the city: rolls, maki, tempura, sushi, noodles, and you’ll find the usual suspects when it comes to the Korean side of things: bulgogi, kimchee, bibimbap and the like, but I was pleased to see some dishes I have never heard of nor tried before like shabu shabu (thinly sliced beef and vegetables that you dip and cook in a huge pot of seaweed broth), jijimi (Korean pancake), and pork bulgogi marinated in a chili sauce.

Yoon Lee employs a sushi chef who trained in Japan and worked there and in the United Kingdom as well.

He has over 20 years of sushi skills under his belt and his precision is evident in the rolls and sushi coming out of the kitchen. Sabu offers a good assortment of fresh fish including uni (sea urchin) and butterfish, and all sushi comes with white ginger and decorative dollops of wasabi.

The wait staff (only one server while we were there other than the owner) needs to pick up the pace a bit, but overall, Sabu is a restaurant I would go back to–specifically for an interesting dish called gyu tang (beef tongue), because life is too short to not enjoy tongue every now and then.

My CBC Edmonton AM review with Mark Harvey can be found here.