y father won’t eat sushi. He’s totally unreasonable about it. He sees a slice of shiny, pink fish attached to a miniscule amount of rice with a piece of tape-like seaweed and he balks.

This is why I was so excited to hear about Miku Aburi Sushi Gourmet Restaurant, the new aburi-style sushi joint in Vancouver’s business district.

Aburi sushi is still raw, don’t get me wrong; but I’m hoping it’s going to look cooked enough to fool my dad. The basic idea of aburi sushi is that it is lightly seared – flash seared, or flame seared – on the outside. The inside is still raw; this isn’t your papa’s barbequed salmon. There is, however, a definite heat: applied with a grill, or with a torch, quickly, lightly. It’s usually topped with something (say, Japanese horse radish, green onions, or spiced onions) and isn’t necessarily eaten with soy sauce.

There is a definite heat to aburi-style sushi; it is lightly seared, but still raw inside.

Chef and owner Seigo Nakamura took over his family business ten years ago, when he was barely 22. The business consisted of two almost failing restaurants in Japan that had been around since the mid-fifties; Nakamura sauntered into the joint, restructured the service, and headed to the kitchen, where he – with no formal training in his background – set about learning everything the chefs could teach him.