Flavor Boulevard

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Beautiful meals at Iyasare

December 23, 2013 By: Mai Truong Category: California - The Bay Area, Japanese

iayasare-miso-glazed-duck
In less than a month since its opening, everybody I know on 4th Street has been to Iyasare, from the regular shoppers to the shop owners, and everybody praises it. The restaurant, operated by former Yoshi’s executive chef Shotaro Kamio, replaces the equally cute and also Japanese O Chame. The two restaurants have different concepts, of course, and experiencing both in the same space – reminiscing on O Chame’s menu and atmosphere while savoring Iyasare’s – was like tasting the fleeting grandeur of ukiyo-e aesthetics in the most delicious way possible.

iyasare-sashimi
A beautiful arrangement: ikura (salmon roe), ankimo (monkfish liver), hotate (scallop, the white thing that is barely visible next to razor-thin slices of radish), mackerel (silvery grey, also almost invisible under the radish), and 4 beautiful sweet lobes of uni (sea urchin roe, on the maple leaf) ($22). The ankimo has a thick and dried rind, its flavors were a tad salty and smokey for my taste.(*) The uni was extra-creamy but a little too soft. The ikura was some lovely bubbles.

You can order a side of sushi rice with the sashimi. Or just sushi rice. Actually, I ate every single last grain of rice in that bowl, and I’d be happy to skip the sashimi.

iyasare-apple-seaweed-salad
Apple seaweed salad with fennel, pickled daikon and carrots, shaved bonito, citrus brown rice vinaigrette with fresh bits of blood orange, and two silken tofu cubes ($9). Nothing to complain here.

iyasare-beef-tataki
Wagyu beef tataki ($13), slightly seared; the best way to eat them, we found, is:
1. Place a tuft of green stringy stuff (julienned wasabi leaves, wasabi sprout, chicory, whatever leafy things) and a sliver of crispy garlic on a slice of beef,
2. Daintily use your chopsticks to roll the beef to enclose the greens and the tangerine bits,
3. Still using the chopsticks, turn the beef roll 2 times around to soak in the ponzu (the brown sauce).
4. Stuff it in your mouth (if you manage to keep it together this far). Delicious.

Our waitress weaving back and forth through the dinner rush hour.

Our waitress weaving back and forth through the dinner rush hour.

It was a Wednesday night, Iyasare was pretty peaceful and devoid of people, but only until about 7. Then, everybody in town poured in, the waitresses started to lose track of things, brought us things we didn’t order and simply couldn’t see us anymore.

iyasare-duck
Miso-glazed Maple Leaf duck confit ($20). Embarassingly, we thought the “Maple Leaf” was part of the dish (but no, it’s the name of the duck farm). In our defense, the maple leaf in the sashimi plate led us astray. ๐Ÿ˜›

I wasn’t too thrilled by the Tokyo turnip, the green beans and the gobo (burdock) in this dish. A length-wise-cut gobo would have been crunchier, and the turnip was cooked a hair too long. On the bright side, very rarely does a duck dish go wrong, and when it’s glazed with miso like this? Heavenly.

iyasare-gyutan
The BEST of the night: gyutan (grilled beef tongue) ($17). Well, I always love beef tongue, so I’m biased. Maybe the duck was better. But this beef tongue dish was perfect as a whole, from the quick-pickled cucumber to the trio of miso (the black akamiso had the deepest, richest flavor among the three). When you cut into a slice of gyutan, you could feel through your knife how tender it was. I even ate a fourth of the grilled lemon (under the right piles of gyutan).

iyasare
We skipped desserts.

Address: Iyasare
1830 Fourth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 845-8100

FOODNOTE:
(*) For comparison, B-dama’s ankimo is still the champion on the East Bay, and Musashi’s ankimo is surprisingly satisfactory for its price mark.

A more comprehensive “map” of what we shared is on Ponga.

0 Comments to “Beautiful meals at Iyasare”


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  20. ๋ˆ„๋ˆ„ํ‹ฐ๋น„์˜ ์„œ๋น„์Šค ์ข…๋ฃŒ ์ด๋ ฅ๊ณผ ๊ฐ™์€ ์ด๋ฆ„์˜ ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ๋ฅผ ํ™•์ธํ•  ๋•Œ ์•Œ์•„๋‘˜ ๋‚ด์šฉ์„ ์ •๋ฆฌํ–ˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆยท์˜ํ™” ๋‹ค์‹œ๋ณด๊ธฐ ์ œ๊ณต ์—ฌ๋ถ€, ํšŒ์ฐจยท์ž๋ง‰ยทํ™”์งˆ ํ™•์ธ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๊ณผ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ์‚ดํŽด๋ณด์„ธ์š”.

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  21. ๋ˆ„๋ˆ„ํ‹ฐ๋น„์˜ ์„œ๋น„์Šค ์ข…๋ฃŒ ์ด๋ ฅ๊ณผ ๊ฐ™์€ ์ด๋ฆ„์˜ ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ๋ฅผ ํ™•์ธํ•  ๋•Œ ์•Œ์•„๋‘˜ ๋‚ด์šฉ์„ ์ •๋ฆฌํ–ˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๋“œ๋ผ๋งˆยท์˜ํ™” ๋‹ค์‹œ๋ณด๊ธฐ ์ œ๊ณต ์—ฌ๋ถ€, ํšŒ์ฐจยท์ž๋ง‰ยทํ™”์งˆ ํ™•์ธ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๊ณผ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ์‚ดํŽด๋ณด์„ธ์š”.

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  22. ๋ถ€์‚ฐ์˜คํ”ผ๋ฅผ ๊ฒ€์ƒ‰ํ•˜๋ฉฐ ๋ถ€์‚ฐ ์ง€์—ญ ์ผ๋ฐ˜ ๋งˆ์‚ฌ์ง€ยท์ŠคํŒŒ๋ฅผ ์•Œ์•„๋ณด๋Š” ๋ถ„๋“ค์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ์•ˆ๋‚ด์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ํ”„๋กœ๊ทธ๋žจ ์„ ํƒ, ๊ด€๋ฆฌ ์‹œ๊ฐ„๊ณผ ๋น„์šฉ, ์‹œ์„คยท์œ„์ƒ, ์ฃผ์ฐจ, ์˜ˆ์•ฝ ์ „ ํ™•์ธ์‚ฌํ•ญ๊ณผ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ์ •๋ฆฌํ–ˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

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  23. ๋ถ€์‚ฐ์˜คํ”ผ๋ฅผ ๊ฒ€์ƒ‰ํ•˜๋ฉฐ ๋ถ€์‚ฐ ์ง€์—ญ ์ผ๋ฐ˜ ๋งˆ์‚ฌ์ง€ยท์ŠคํŒŒ๋ฅผ ์•Œ์•„๋ณด๋Š” ๋ถ„๋“ค์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ์•ˆ๋‚ด์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ํ”„๋กœ๊ทธ๋žจ ์„ ํƒ, ๊ด€๋ฆฌ ์‹œ๊ฐ„๊ณผ ๋น„์šฉ, ์‹œ์„คยท์œ„์ƒ, ์ฃผ์ฐจ, ์˜ˆ์•ฝ ์ „ ํ™•์ธ์‚ฌํ•ญ๊ณผ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ์ •๋ฆฌํ–ˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

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  24. ๊ด‘์ฃผํ˜ธ๋น ๋ฅผ ์ฐพ๋Š” ๋ถ„์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ๊ด‘์ฃผ๊ด‘์—ญ์‹œ ์˜ˆ์•ฝ ์•ˆ๋‚ด. ๋ผ์šด์ง€ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ, ์ธ์›๋ณ„ ๊ณต๊ฐ„ ์„ ํƒ, ๊ฐ€๊ฒฉ ์ƒ๋‹ด, ์ฒซ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ์ค€๋น„์™€ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ํ™•์ธํ•˜๊ณ  ์›ํ•˜๋Š” ์ผ์ •์— ๋งž์ถฐ ๋ฌธ์˜

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  25. You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site!

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  26. ๊ด‘์ฃผํ˜ธ๋น ๋ฅผ ์ฐพ๋Š” ๋ถ„์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ๊ด‘์ฃผ๊ด‘์—ญ์‹œ ์˜ˆ์•ฝ ์•ˆ๋‚ด. ๋ผ์šด์ง€ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ, ์ธ์›๋ณ„ ๊ณต๊ฐ„ ์„ ํƒ, ๊ฐ€๊ฒฉ ์ƒ๋‹ด, ์ฒซ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ์ค€๋น„์™€ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ํ™•์ธํ•˜๊ณ  ์›ํ•˜๋Š” ์ผ์ •์— ๋งž์ถฐ ๋ฌธ์˜

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  27. ์—ฌ๊ธฐ์—ฌ์—์„œ ๊ฒ€์ƒ‰ยท์ฝ˜ํ…์ธ ยทํ•™์Šตยท๋””์ž์ธยท๊ฐœ๋ฐœยท์ƒํ™œ ๋ถ„์•ผ์˜ ๋งํฌ๋ชจ์Œ๊ณผ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ชจ์Œ์„ ์‚ดํŽด๋ณด์„ธ์š”. ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ ์ฃผ์†Œ ํ™•์ธ๋ฒ•, ๋ชจ๋ฐ”์ผ ์ด์šฉ๋ฒ•, ๋ถ๋งˆํฌ ์ •๋ฆฌ, ์ ‘์† ๋ฌธ์ œ ํ•ด๊ฒฐ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๊ณผ FAQ๋ฅผ ์•ˆ๋‚ดํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

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  28. ์—ฌ๊ธฐ์—ฌ์—์„œ ๊ฒ€์ƒ‰ยท์ฝ˜ํ…์ธ ยทํ•™์Šตยท๋””์ž์ธยท๊ฐœ๋ฐœยท์ƒํ™œ ๋ถ„์•ผ์˜ ๋งํฌ๋ชจ์Œ๊ณผ ์ฃผ์†Œ๋ชจ์Œ์„ ์‚ดํŽด๋ณด์„ธ์š”. ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ ์ฃผ์†Œ ํ™•์ธ๋ฒ•, ๋ชจ๋ฐ”์ผ ์ด์šฉ๋ฒ•, ๋ถ๋งˆํฌ ์ •๋ฆฌ, ์ ‘์† ๋ฌธ์ œ ํ•ด๊ฒฐ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•๊ณผ FAQ๋ฅผ ์•ˆ๋‚ดํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

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  30. I like this site so much, saved to my bookmarks. “I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.” by Dorothy Parker.

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  31. Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point. You clearly know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just posting videos to your blog when you could be giving us something enlightening to read?

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  32. ๊ด‘์ฃผํ˜ธ๋น ๋ฅผ ์ฐพ๋Š” ๋ถ„์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ๊ด‘์ฃผ๊ด‘์—ญ์‹œ ์˜ˆ์•ฝ ์•ˆ๋‚ด. ๋ผ์šด์ง€ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ, ์ธ์›๋ณ„ ๊ณต๊ฐ„ ์„ ํƒ, ๊ฐ€๊ฒฉ ์ƒ๋‹ด, ์ฒซ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ์ค€๋น„์™€ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ํ™•์ธํ•˜๊ณ  ์›ํ•˜๋Š” ์ผ์ •์— ๋งž์ถฐ ๋ฌธ์˜

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  33. ๊ด‘์ฃผํ˜ธ๋น ๋ฅผ ์ฐพ๋Š” ๋ถ„์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ๊ด‘์ฃผ๊ด‘์—ญ์‹œ ์˜ˆ์•ฝ ์•ˆ๋‚ด. ๋ผ์šด์ง€ ๋ถ„์œ„๊ธฐ, ์ธ์›๋ณ„ ๊ณต๊ฐ„ ์„ ํƒ, ๊ฐ€๊ฒฉ ์ƒ๋‹ด, ์ฒซ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ์ค€๋น„์™€ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ํ™•์ธํ•˜๊ณ  ์›ํ•˜๋Š” ์ผ์ •์— ๋งž์ถฐ ๋ฌธ์˜

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  34. ๋Œ€๋ฐคยท๋Œ€๊ตฌ์˜๋ฐค์„ ์ฐพ๋Š” ๋ถ„๋“ค์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ๋Œ€๊ตฌ ์ง€์—ญ ์ •๋ณด. ๋™์„ฑ๋กœยท์ˆ˜์„ฑ๋ชปยท๋™๋Œ€๊ตฌ์—ญยท๋‹ฌ์„œ๊ตฌ์˜ ์ €๋… ์—ฌ๊ฐ€์™€ ์ง€์—ญ๋ณ„ ํŠน์ง•, ํ›„๊ธฐ ๋น„๊ต ๊ธฐ์ค€, ๊ฐ€๊ฒฉยท์šด์˜์‹œ๊ฐ„ยท๊ตํ†ต ํ™•์ธ์‚ฌํ•ญ ๋ฐ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ์‚ดํŽด๋ณด์„ธ์š”.

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  35. ๋Œ€๋ฐคยท๋Œ€๊ตฌ์˜๋ฐค์„ ์ฐพ๋Š” ๋ถ„๋“ค์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ๋Œ€๊ตฌ ์ง€์—ญ ์ •๋ณด. ๋™์„ฑ๋กœยท์ˆ˜์„ฑ๋ชปยท๋™๋Œ€๊ตฌ์—ญยท๋‹ฌ์„œ๊ตฌ์˜ ์ €๋… ์—ฌ๊ฐ€์™€ ์ง€์—ญ๋ณ„ ํŠน์ง•, ํ›„๊ธฐ ๋น„๊ต ๊ธฐ์ค€, ๊ฐ€๊ฒฉยท์šด์˜์‹œ๊ฐ„ยท๊ตํ†ต ํ™•์ธ์‚ฌํ•ญ ๋ฐ ์ž์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋Š” ์งˆ๋ฌธ์„ ์‚ดํŽด๋ณด์„ธ์š”.

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  37. Hiya! I know this is kinda off topic but I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in trading links or maybe guest writing a blog post or vice-versa? My blog addresses a lot of the same topics as yours and I feel we could greatly benefit from each other. If you happen to be interested feel free to send me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you! Terrific blog by the way!

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  50. I’m really enjoying the theme/design of your site. Do you ever run into any internet browser compatibility issues? A couple of my blog readers have complained about my blog not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Chrome. Do you have any solutions to help fix this problem?

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