Welcoming the first day of summer, Ki Modern Japanese + Bar (@kijapanese) at Shangri-La Hotel in downtown Vancouver hosted a patio party for its special guests. Hosted by Tara Parker Tait PR, guests were welcomed by a member of the PR company and the restaurant, along with a Green Tea Martini. Being ushered through the lobby of the restaurant to the patio, more drinks were flowing and both an open bar and a sake bar greeted guests. Outside on the patio DJ Ana (@djanamusic) played a series of house tunes to set the mood while PhotoStar setup a backdrop for guests to take photos.

As the drinks flowed, servers came around with a variety of Ki’s specialty hors d’oeuvres and two chefs (George and Yoshi) serving fresh sushi nigiri and rolls. Some highlights of the evening included:

• Rice cracker crusted fried prawns with honey uzu sauce
• Ginger glazed beef skewers with grape tomato
• Sake glazed seared pork  belly with chili ponzu sauce
• Sirloin sashimi with chili soy sauce
• Hamachi sashimi with uzu sauce
• King crab (kane) deep fried ball with spicy mayo
• Fresh sockeye salmon, saba, ebi, ahi tuna nigiri from Sushi Master chef Yoshi Tabo
• Fresh dynamite and california rolls made by Sushi chef George
• Cucumber avocado roll (avocado vegetarian roll wrapped in a thin layer of cucumber instead of seaweed)
• Unagi smoked salmon and dungeness crab roll

At the sake bar, Darren Kaushal, Ki’s Bar Manager, introduces guests to 3 types of chilled Japanese-imported sakes, based on grades ranging from 50-70% rice-milled. He was friendly and extremely educational in the art of sake. Ki has 50-60 types of sakes ranging from local Vancouver artisan sake, to USA Oregon’s sake, to Japanese imported sake. The three types of sake sampled at tonight’s event was not suitable for hot sake, so best to try chilled.

At the open bar, bartender Choi catered to our tastes by making specialty cocktails – one called the Choi Special was a favorite for some of the female guests – mixing Malibu, banana, pineapple, orange and cranberry juice to make a delicious but dangerous alcoholic beverage. Bartender Choi also recommended the Hello Kitty, mixed with Chombard (raspberry liqueur), passion fruit juice and champagne. Next time you go to Ki and Choi is working at the bar, request his special Malibu drink if you like something fruity.

At the end of the evening, gift bags were given out showcasing Japanese sake, a couple of melt-in-your-mouth chocolates and chopsticks.

Overall a wonderful and successful event full of food and drinks! Great job Tait Parker PR for a successful restaurant event. The only thing I would suggest for future events at Ki: perhaps lower volume for music for better mingling and chatting (at times the music was too loud for guests to chat outside on the patio), and perhaps name tags for staff so we can give kudos for those who were super outstanding!

Note: Although as a guest for this event, I was not expected to write a post. This post is based on my personal opinions. @alicejhwong