“This is my favourite time,” Yuki Aida says with a smile. “It’s very calm—like a Zen moment before the storm.”

She’s sitting in the lounge area of her restaurant, Sushi Mahana, sipping a cup of steaming tea before the first service begins. Soft, instrumental music plays in the background as chef Hiroshi Hoshiko gets things ready behind the sushi bar; a few servers float around the space, each wearing a kimono from Aida’s personal collection.

Aida opened Sushi Mahana, a high-end omakase restaurant, in January 2023. Located in Lower Lonsdale just a few blocks from the SeaBus, Sushi Mahana has steadily built a community of devoted regulars. Tonight, Aida mentions, it’s about 80 per cent returning customers, which is just how she wants it.

“I want Mahana to be the gem of North Vancouver,” she says. “It’s like a little secret.”

It certainly feels that way upon walking inside. Instantly, the world fades away; in its place is a narrow space with dark woods and soft lights.

Those in the know do come for Mahana’s ambience, which is calming and intimate (the restaurant only has 10 seats, all located around the sushi bar)—but most of all, they come for the food.

Mahana serves Kyushu-style sushi, which means using a bunch of different little ingredients to emphasize and complement the fish. You won’t find soy sauce for dipping or wasabi for smothering (though you will find pickled ginger for palate cleansing); instead, you’ll find carefully executed bites using a mixture of local and imported seafood, each one different from the last and yet somehow altogether harmonious.

The result is an exciting, elegant, and surprising exploration of flavour. Tonight it’s such elegance as flounder with sudachi (a small Japanese citrus fruit); cuttle fish with ume plum; red snapper with shiso flower; seer fish with yuzu mustard; bluefin tuna with nori and yuzu peel; and golden eye snapper with purple radish.

Each single piece of sushi could tell its own story of provenance and culture. Half the fun of Mahana is peering over the bar and watching Hoshiko and his team of two expertly prepare each individual bite. The crux of omakase dining revolves around a carefully designed menu that is made right before your eyes—and that happens with special finesse here. Each fish is cut right before it’s served, with the culinary team using delicate hands (and often tweezers) to apply a triangle of black garlic to the top of a piece of fish, or to zest fresh sudachi on top of seawater eel. The magic is in these moments as much as it’s in every heavenly bite.

All in all, it’s probably about as authentic of an experience as you can get outside Japan. Aida, who is from Tokyo and moved here after falling in love with the city during a business trip, prides herself on delivering something true to her roots.

“We actually had a group of people from Tokyo,” Aida recalls. “They came in and they said, ‘It’s incredible.’” She beams.

Despite having created such a special dining experience, Aida hasn’t always been in the food industry. Her background is actually in clinical psychology, but after moving here she decided to expand her horizons with some classes at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts. She worked part-time for a bit at the legendary C Restaurant, but had zero plans to open up her own spot. That is, until she met Hoshiko—who is also from Japan, and whose impressive resume includes the beloved Miku—and they eventually decided to team up.

Running at $250 per person for the premium menu (plus more for sake pairings), Mahana is definitely not your cheap-and-cheerful neighbourhood sushi joint. (Though, notably, a portion of sales proceeds are donated to the North Shore Crisis Services Society, which aids women and children in abusive households.) This is a place of exceptionality, and it has a price tag to match. Still, it’s not something that Aida takes lightly. She often comes to Mahana as a diner, experiencing the food and setting as a regular customer would. It’s the best way for her to figure out what’s working and what’s not, and to make sure that everything meets her very high standards.

“It is an investment,” Aida acknowledges of the price. “So I really really appreciate that the guests come and take a chance on us, and I never, ever want to blow that. I want to deliver something that everybody thinks is worth it.”

What stands out, at the end of the day, is an inherent respect for the food (and therefore the guest). Every single course is an acknowledgement of food’s higher power. This isn’t about eating to live; it’s about living to eat.

Sushi Mahana is located at 175 3rd Street West in North Vancouver.