The luxury of cold noodles on colder days. Everything was perfect, from the taste of wasabi in the noodle dipping sauce to the tail end of those shrimps. So perfect that I couldn’t properly focus my camera phone.
Too bad Chef Koichi Ishii only makes the soba on Friday and Saturday from 11 am to 1 pm.
Pictured: Ten zaru soba (soba with tempura shrimps and vegetables) – $18. More details on what’s in the picture are here.
The latest addition to my dream house: a wooden platform to put in the garden where we can sit cross-legged, eat, drink tea, lie down while listening to the birds and wind chime. That platform, we call it phảng |fang|, but I don’t know the Japanese or English word for it :-/
It came about when Kristen and I sat on that wooden thing outside Ippuku tonight. It was outside outside, not a patio sitting, no chairs, no tables, just a platform like a wide bench. We came for their goma ice cream, and the wait for a table was super long so ordering at the bar was the best idea. You’d think it’d be cold, but there was the heater lamp hanging off the roof to warm us. My face was so warm I thought I was gonna get sunburn at 9 pm.
It was so relaxing. Sit cross-legged, savor sesame ice cream, sesame cracker and a mochi, watch the street and the boys goofing off on it, and be watched by people waiting for a table. Come to think of it, we weren’t any less goofy than those boys. 😀
“Ippuku” means “break” or “to take a break”. It doesn’t surprise me that this place made it into the Top 100 of the San Francisco Chronicle last spring, I surprised myself that I had’t taken a break here all this time. How can I call myself a Berkeley food blogger without eating at Ippuku?
Maybe it’s the signless entrance that camouflages the izakaya in the dark, minus the dimly lit sake bottles on the side and the closed door, which I can never open correctly from the inside. Maybe it’s my distrust of Yelp reviews. But I brushed through the cotton curtains to enter that long, dark, narrow, stark simple structure, saw the half-shadowed faces immersed in quiet enjoyment, and the wooden platform, on which you can sit seiza style (flat kneeling) or dangle your feet under the table like a true Westerner; from that moment, I decided that it’s a lovely place, no matter how the food was. Of course, the food was good.
The most written thing about Ippuku must be the collection of all-part chicken edibles. Every single blog and its best buddies have something to say about (and a picture of) the omakase gushi ($14, 5 chef-choice skewers), which might include gizzards ($6.50), hearts ($6.50), shoulders ($6), necks ($6.50), breasts ($6), wings ($6.50), thighs ($6), tails ($7), varying throughout the night. They also have knee cartilage ($7) and breast cartilage ($7), which gets sold out before 6 pm. Growing up, I’ve had my shares
of chicken from head to toe to bone marrow, and I still clean the chicken bones to its dryest whenever possible, so this is old game. It’s not that “Ippuku uses every part of the chicken to its best effect”, Ippuku simply uses every part of the chicken and (hopefully) convinces the Western palate that white meat isn’t everything (if it is anything). The chewy crunchy gizzards and hearts made me feel at home.