The menu at Ping’s Café offers many dishes that cleverly fuse Japanese and North American influences, such as fries with yoshoku sauce and nori-flecked mayo (pictured).

Credit: Doug Shanks

Ping’s Café brings the izakaya craze to the east side

During its first week of business, two months ago, Ping’s Café looked as if it didn’t want to attract very much attention. Unless word of mouth from the cool kids met your ear, it would have been next to impossible to know that the space it occupies is, in fact, a restaurant. The signage (a remnant of the previous tenant) was faded and made harder to read through a skeletal, fabric-less awning; the windows were frosted from top to bottom; and the door was always closed. To be honest, it looked more like a forbidding laundromat where cash was cleaned before clothes. It certainly didn’t look like the kind of place where you would want to have dinner.

But if you peered closely at that frosted windows, at about knee height you would notice a thin space with a line of script revealing the restaurant’s operating hours (“Sun-Tue, 5pm-late”), its name, and its concept (“Homestyle Japanese”). More recently, a sandwich board was parked on the sidewalk, which announces that Ping’s is an izakaya — a magnetic buzzword  these days, one that has entered our gastronomic vernacular to mean casual, inventive and fun Japanese food, built for young sushi-phobes who are keen to share and sample without feeling pain in the pocket. Izakayas hadn’t appeared on the east side prior to this place, so Ping’s has made a smart branding modification, one that will probably put a lot more curious bums in the seats.

It’s a small space, with about 30 seats in total, but it has an airy, almost dream-like quality that makes it seem a little larger. Co-owner Josh Olson swims deeply in Vancouver’s arts community (he also works as an assistant to the artist Rodney Graham), so he enlisted the help of several friends and colleagues to contribute to the room’s design. The results of their collaborative efforts are gorgeous. From the pressed-tin ceiling (painted a creamy white) to the dozens of curling black-and-white lights that hang frozen over the twin banquettes and short bar like illuminated orthocone fossils, the look hastens a vibe of stillness not reflected by the hustle of the east-side traffic outside or the drabness of the restaurant’s uninviting exterior. The soft seats along the walls are dressed in grey pleats, and the tables are topped with zinc (these are already aging gracefully with the stains of saké droplets and Japanese beer condensation). Two mirrors bring in more light, while a massive Rodney Graham canvas at the back of the room provides some colour. With no PR being done to get the word out, Ping’s is the sexiest little room you’ve likely never heard of.

The wine list is short, cheap, and rather pitifully chosen, as if it’s trying to steer us to drink something else (a sparkling option would make a welcome pairing). The beer list is where it’s at, with bottles of Kirin Ichiban, Sapporo and Asahi ($5.50 each) rubbing necks with Belgium’s sweetish Palm and India’s clean-tasting Kingfisher ($6 each). Saké from Granville Island’s Artisan SakeMaker rounds things out (see By the Glass, above). But, in decidedly un-izakaya fashion, there is no cocktail list to speak of, and no dessert card either. Service is a simple affair, with little in the way of protocol or expertise — it gets the job done, being neither in your face nor AWOL. Unlike most izakayas, however, the servers are keen to help you navigate the menu.

Olson’s Japanese aunt and business partner, Hiroko Yamamoto, runs the kitchen, and there’s much to love on the menu. It reads, I assume, not unlike a Tokyo diner’s would circa 1950, catering to homesick American military personnel, with Japanese ingredients playing up Yankee themes. Witness the “hambagoo” dinner plate ($15), anchored by a hamburger patty washed in a thin, brown, HP-ish sauce called yoshoku; the plump Ping Dog bratwurst ($6) with citrus soy and spiced daikon; and crispy fries ($5) sparingly drizzled with seaweed-flecked mayo. Such playfulness is short-lived, however, with the aw-shucks charm of Mama’s potato salad ($5) drowned out by a list of far more fascinating starters like thick harusame noodles bowled with cucumber, seaweed and shiitake, and marinated mackerel flavoured with a mix of carrot, onion and celery ($6). Izakaya standards take over from there, with crispy deep-fried karaage chicken ($6) readied for ponzu dipping; pillowy, garlic-heavy pork gyozas ($6); and deep-fried panko prawns ($16) next to tartar sauce instead of the usual drench of chili-spiced mayo. They all hit the right notes without being too heavy. Larger dishes are also good for sharing. Go for the thick slices of black cod sweetened with a miso-teriyaki sauce ($18), and the deep-fried flat cakes of panko-breaded pork tenderloin ($15). Nice and simple.

Presented without much artistry on old homestyle plates that look as if they were stolen from my mother’s pantry 30 years ago, it’s comfort food that warms without being too familiar or foreign. The contrasts between Ping’s exterior, interior, and menu are tremendous — borderline ironic — but the complete package somehow manages to make the discordance seem natural, as if it were a conceptual device employed to hook only those who appreciate honesty, originality, and risk. Ping’s Café is smart, fun, and just as interesting as the izakayas downtown — an affordable little adventure that I can’t help but heartily recommend.