Meiji Sushi & G Martini Bar

Meiji Sushi & G Martini Bar has been serving Japanese cuisine paired with sophisticated martinis for fifteen years now. It’s a little upscale and pricey, but you’ll find people in their mid-twenties all the way to their late fifties sipping on martinis over a roll of sushi any day of the week.

You can choose to dine in the bar upstairs, or in the restaurant downstairs. Either way, you’ll feel like you’re at an exclusive place in New York, or a small tavern in Europe, because of its size, historic vibe, dim lights, and smooth music. Meiji Sushi & G Martini Bar is a great place for a date, a girls night out, or a casual weekday drink.

Although Meiji Sushi & G Martini Bar is located in Winnipeg’s famed Osborne Village, it’s a couple doors away from heavy foot traffic, and as a result some may feel unsafe and wary of the people lurking outside of its entrance. But, in all my years visiting Meiji Sushi & G Martini Bar, I’ve never felt threatened or scared, and I’m a fairly small and young woman, who could be defined as ‘vulnerable in appearance.’

If you aren’t big into martinis, they offers spirits, beer, and wine, but if you are into martinis this will be like heaven for you. From classic martinis, to their twist on Caesars called Caesartini, they’ve got you covered with over 35 martinis to choose from. As for their food menu, it’s overwhelming and the options are endless. If you don’t know much about Japanese food, the menu will throw you for a loop because flipping through hundreds of items with foreign names is not easy. But, when you do finally decide what to order, its fresh taste will melt in your mouth and you’ll forget how hard it was to narrow down the massive selection.

If you choose to dine downstairs, be sure to grab a seat at the sushi bar so you can watch the chefs slice, dice, and roll your food in front of you, or make a reservation for a tatami, a traditional Japanese table. If you choose to dine upstairs in the bar, the entire food menu is available until 1 a.m. on weekdays, and 10 p.m. on weekends, and the entire martini menu is always available downstairs to enjoy with your food.

Meiji Sushi & G Martini Bar is open seven days a week, but the restaurant has different hours than the bar. Reservations can be made for Meiji Sushi, but since G Martini Bar’s capacity is 40 people, and it gets packed on evenings and weekends, reservations are only accepted until 8 p.m. For more information on their hours of operation and reservation information, check out their website at meijisushi.ca.