KANPAI JAPANESE RESTAURANT

            Cheers!  Proust!  Sante!  Kanpai!  What a cheery and companionable name for Port Vila’s most noted Japanese restaurant.  We first heard about this sushi restaurant from Hiro, the Japanese General Manager of the Melanesian.  The best recommendation for an ethnic restaurant is seeing it frequented by native people from that country.  The evening of our visit, sure enough, the majority of tables had Asian faces around them.  In fact, a crew from Korean television was filming Mami Kiyofuji as she created sushi plates and other Japanese dishes.  She proudly boasted to us that crews from Japan have already filmed the restaurant.

            Kanpai re-opened at its new location, next to Origin Gas, on the road to the Cruise Ship Wharf, last July.  It is easy to miss the discreet little sign, and the front entrance, which looks more like the back-door delivery area. Once inside, you’re actually outside!  Or more accurately, you’re on a covered wooden deck with an eye-catching little lighted swimming pool ornamented by handcrafted miniature outrigger canoes delicately drifting on transparent water.  About a dozen tables dressed in warm sunset colored cloths adorn the deck and patio.  Sushi bar stools line the banister counter, which overlooks Iririki Island and the end of the bay.  Mami, Managing Director and driving force of Kanpai, creates much of the food herself, aided by another Japanese Chef.  The Maitre D’ is a handsome, and very polite, young Vietnamese gentleman, Van Hai Nguyen.  Smiling barman, Lulu, and servers are ni-Vanuatu.

            The menu offers a lot more than raw fish and cold sushi.  There are noodle dishes, either in soup, or in a form similar to chow mein (700-900vt), deep friend dishes like tempura (600-780vt), teriyakis (700vt), sukiyaki (a classic Japanese specialty) (1500vt), and many more dishes well appreciated by the Japanese, but not well known to us.  Mami custom designed a sashimi/sushi plate for us and included a few exotics like octopus slices, and seaweed wrapped sushi topped with fish eggs. (Just think of it as Japanese caviar!).  Hot dishes were: Gyoza, fried dumplings much like potstickers, tempura veggies, and Kanpai Special Spring rolls.  Each comes with it’s own special dipping sauce.  The sushi would not be complete, of course, with out pickled ginger and the head zinging Wasabi, which is like fireworks for the sinuses!  Love it!  The highlight of the evening was a new dish not on the regular menu, Crabmeat Croquettes (950vt).  Looking like Snow Crab claws, they are crabmeat balls, crumbed, deep-fried and drizzled with a dark soy sauce – very rich in crab flavor but with a very different texture.  Very nice.  For dessert?  Green Tea Ice Cream, of course!  I love the juxtaposition of opposing flavors – rich and creamy, not too sweet, not too bitter.

 Kanpai also serves lunch, and each day features a Lunch Box Pack of selected assorted goodies (1300vt).  You may even order, would you believe, Japanese Octopus Pizza!  How different is that??  Open Mon thru Sat  for lunch and dinner.  Phone: 26687.