Travis & Lee on 
Erica B. on 
are you gonna eat that? on 
Ed on 
Jackie on 
Vancouver-area food bloggers are all abuzz about a Japanese food truck that does business in an empty Richmond parking lot. It sounded right up my alley!
On an overcast summer day, I circled Westminster Highway, Alderbridge Way and Gilbert Road twice before I found Tenku Bakudanyaki across the street from an ICBC and next to a closed-down nightclub.
Tenku Bakudanyaki — which translates to “grilled bombs” — makes tennis ball-sized fritters, stuffed with cabbage, mochi, a quail egg, shrimp, squid, and octopus.
It’s kind of like takoyaki but not really.
The cook layered all the ingredients in a grill with what looked like eight half-spherical molds, and then poured batter over it. After the bottom half was cooked, he used two sets of chopsticks to carefully roll each ball over, while tucking in the stuffing.
I know it was being made fresh but I was getting antsy waiting a good 10 minutes. There’s not much to look at in an empty parking lot.
There are no seats or tables, just a small awning tent to stand under. Several people were waiting for their orders ahead of me. Most customers drove away with the bakudanyaki, or sat and ate them in their cars.
The bakudanyaki are served in an old-school Chinese food container — which I learned was smart because it gets all sloppy.
The stuffing is always the same, but you can choose from seven sauce toppings like curry or mustard mayo. Since it was my first time, I went with the original, which was Japanese mayonnaise and some kind of brown sauce (okonomiyaki sauce?), topped with bonito flakes.
Every bakudanyaki costs 500 cents, taxes included.
This is what it looked like in the box.
This is what it looked like (below) when I tried to pull the bakudanyaki up with my chopsticks.
(The fine people at Chow Times are brilliant, because they brought their own plate to properly photograph the bakudanyaki. Now that’s dedication.)
So what did it taste like? Well, like a bomb of flavours and textures.
The first mouthful was crunchy and chewy mochi with some sweet mayonnaise. Then I dug through bites of squid, crunchy cabbage, a burst of pickled ginger, then bits of boiled quail egg, and some more cabbage.
The bakudanyaki sat heavy in my stomach, but I don’t think it’s enough for a full meal. I quite enjoyed it, but my dad thought it was weird.
It’s certainly something that would taste awful once it got cold. So eat it piping hot and fresh from the truck.
You can ask for a stamp card that will give you your eighth grilled bomb free.
Tenku Bakudanyaki, 7100 Elmbridge Way (at Gilbert Road), Richmond, B.C. Open daily noon to 9:30 p.m. (or until they run out of bakudanyaki).
Sounds like a mixture between takoyaki and okonomiyaki. The dark brown sauce was likely okonomiyaki sauce?
Jeremy: Yes! That must have been it. Thanks!
So intriguing. After reading about this treat from fellow blogger visits, I started to wonder how it would hold up once it was cold. I suppose with the bombs being small enough not to fill you up, you’d be unlikely to have leftovers though. Great pictures.
I’ve had a lot of takoyaki and okonomiyaki and I’ve got to say, this… sounds intriguing. I’m going to guess it’s almost like okonomiyaki…except in a ball. On another note, their way of business is really neat – a lot of things such as the aforementioned foods are sold on the street in vendors, so they’re sticking pretty true to tradition… WITH A TWIST.
This sounds so fantastic! Such a smart idea of putting it into the take out container. Maybe a flatter box would work better though that was wider on the bottom.