Dachi: the korean inspired farm-to-table East Van

The name Dachi comes from tomodachi, the Japanese word for friend, clipped down to its most casual form, something closer to pal or buddy. Since 2018, this idea has evolved to become more than a name and is now deeply ingrained in the restaurant’s core. A cozy dining room, a bar that fills up early, a patio that started as two tables out front and has since taken over the sidewalk in summer. The space caters itself for a special occasion or a drink with a colleague, which is what its owners were after.

Dachi: A Neighbourhood That Shows Up

Dachi began with a pattern Miki Ellis and her co-owner, Stephen Whiteside, kept noticing while they were working in Toronto restaurants: every night off, the two of them ended up at a corner spot with a short menu, a loud room and a few familiar faces mixed in among the strangers. They came home wanting that kind of address of their own, and found the room for it in Hastings-Sunrise, a stretch of East Vancouver where nearly every storefront is independently owned. A few years into it, general manager Sarah Doerksen came on as the third partner, with the aim of expanding the restaurant through partnerships with likeminded and motivated people.

An old building comes with quirks, and this one keeps them in plain view: the room has texture and personality, much like the plates leaving the kitchen. Studio Roslyn gave it that shape, a design firm whose people had been holding their Christmas party at Dachi for years and knew the room the way regulars know it, neighbours who had become friends.

Grown in BC, seasoned by rooted inspirations

In the kitchen, current-chef Jiwon Seo arrived by way of Montréal Plaza, then Vancouver’s own Burdock & Co. What she inherited has stayed constant since the beginning: local, seasonal and organic, bought directly from farmers in the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan, on a menu of 12 to 15 dishes that gets reprinted almost every day depending on what the farms have that morning.

Jiwon Seo is Korean-Canadian, and some plates carry ingredients from that heritage; others still read faintly of Montréal, which is what happens when a cook is given room to bring every kitchen she has worked onto a menu. Dishes return in altered form rather than repeating: the cavatelli came back for the cooler months with a lamb ragù and black vinegar sauce, a different animal from last year’s version. However, a devilled egg has become one of the essentials of the Dachi menu. Co-owner Miki Ellis is the first to admit she is a sucker for it.

The drinks are where the house makes its reputation. The wine list runs somewhere between 120 and 160 bottles, built almost entirely on small family producers working regeneratively or with a natural lean. There is no printed list. The bottles live on a wine wall, and choosing one is a conversation with whoever is on the floor. Fittingly, the 35-seat room took Platinum at the Vancouver International Wine Festival’s Wine Program Excellence Awards, going up against cellars several times its size. The following year it took gold twice, for best wine by the glass and for best wine program for discovery. Sake also runs deep, and four or five cocktails rotate every month or two and often borrow from the kitchen. 

Dachi: The best order is the one you didn’t place

While people can pick from the menu, the best way to experience Dachi is to hand over the keys. The share menu is five courses that arrive as nine to 12 plates, with an optional pairing, and the staff would rather you came in with no plan. Miki Ellis says it’s actually one of her favourite things, to be able to change someone’s mind about a specific dish or dish pairing. Talking about her experience, she says that sake usually becomes a conversion story. Yet, a good number of regulars now come specifically for the sake.

Ask what makes the place work and the answer is a small team whose members mostly work the same shifts, knows each other’s and the regulars, and keep trying to make the room a little better than it was last week. On a corner in Hastings-Sunrise, friendship remains the whole business plan.

Written by Marie-Françoise Malo
Photography by Dachi

Updated on October 14, 2026

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