Flavor Boulevard

Tag: izakaya

  • Sai the Izakaya

      sai-beef
      Izakayas in the Bay Area mostly target customers with a lot of money to spare (looking right at you, Ippuku!). Although there are merits to that (it costs to support local business and ethical ways of raising animals), a meal at these places is just not the same as sitting in a small neighborhood izakaya, talking to the chef who’s cooking 5 feet away from you, smelling the smoke from both the food and the tobacco of the nearby customer (who you may know by name), and inhaling your food, which comes in big bowls, to your heart’s content. I love neighborhood izakayas in Tokyo.

      sai-near-kameari-eki sai-menu
      Sai is one of them. This place jumps to mind when I think of izakayas nowadays. One big reason is that when I had a homestay in Japan, my host family took me there one night and it was a perfect family experience. If I had discovered the place myself (which I’m not sure is possible), I wouldn’t know what to order (the menu is 90% kanji @_@), I wouldn’t have had two parental figures to share the meal with (traveling alone makes you want to spend time with your parents more, doesn’t it?), nobody would have introduced me to the chef, and the chef wouldn’t have encouragingly complimented my mediocre Japanese.

      Another reason is that Sai has crazy good comfort foods, one of which is the chef’s homemade pizza.

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    • Sushi California – great sushi, even greater korokke

        sc-49'er-roll
        For a while I knew nothing about Japanese food, then within less than one year, I’ve found three places in Berkeley to satisfy my Japanese cravings. To get yakitori, guaranteed quality and to impress friends, I go to Ippuku. For a homey meal at affordable price and convenient distance, I swing by Musashi. For sushi and croquette, Sushi California tops the list.

        Its name is generic and its location rather hidden, had Kristen not shared a Berkeleyside review on my Facebook wall some time ago, I would never have noticed Sushi California, much less tried (I tend to stay away from generic names because they often imply generic food). Then Kristen totally forgot about the place. One day I asked her “wanna try Sushi California?”
        – What’s that?
        – The place you posted on my wall…
        – …

        The biggest reason that I remembered Sushi California before going there was this line in Anna Mindess’ review: “Chef Arakaki admits that he used to offer other Okinawan classics like goya champura (sautéed bitter melon) but they did not sell well.” I love bitter melon, and even more than that, I love ethnic restaurants that try to offer regional specialties, which often go unnoticed by foreign customers and are eventually taken off the menu. (This is why it’s so hard to find decent traditional food in America, regardless of what cuisine you’re looking for.) So, in some way, I liked Sushi California even before I went. I didn’t hope to see bitter melon there now, but what was there was more than enough to keep me coming back.

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      • B-Dama – Taste fresher than fresh

          b-dama-monkfish-liver
          Why don’t I like spicy food? For the same reason I don’t like cupcakes, Chicago pizza or anything that has too much of something for me to taste anything else. For the same reason I shunned sushi for almost 10 years: the first time I had sushi I scooped a spoonful of the lovely green paste into my mouth.

          Those were 10 years that I could have enjoyed so many hamachi nigiri. It’s sad. But that aside, for the same reason that I dislike spicy food, I like B-Dama so much more than I expected. It’s a tiny tiny Japanese restaurant in Piedmont. Its menu doesn’t boast anything particularly breath-taking to draw me out of the comfort of my home, except that I once saw Kristen post on Facebook a picture of the ankimo (monkfish liver) from B-Dama, and Kristen and I have had more than two failed attempts to eat there together just because the restaurant was either closed or too busy when we popped in. When you can’t have something, you want it more.

          Then the day finally arrived. My friend and I tried the ridiculously popular Geta that serves possibly the cheapest sushi and fried chicken bits in the East Bay, were thoroughly impressed by how cheap it was ($35.30 for 7 items), and felt compelled to try its posher sister B-Dama. This time, we made reservation.

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        • Musashi the Izakaya

            Gyuu tan – sliced and grilled beef tongue, brightened up with a touch of lemon and raw daikon.

            So I was going to write a really scathing review on this Joshu-Ya Brasserie place in Berkeley, but midway through the draft I went to Yelp to read my friend Kristen’s review for that same dinner by which we were both gravely disappointed. Not only is her review already detailed and scathing enough, but she’s also been to Joshu-Ya several times. Me? I don’t give restaurants second chances, even first chances are rare. So I figured no way I’d know and write about Joshu-Ya better than Kristen. Also as we immerse in this holiday spirit and on our way to a brand new year, I’d rather be all cheery about a restaurant that I love. 😉 It’s so close to me yet so secluded from the flock of eateries downtown that I hadn’t tried it until last month. Tried it once, then I went nuts and suggested Musashi the izakaya(*) to myself and everyone every time somebody says Japanese. Beware though, this is one of those places that you need to go with someone in the know to get the real things. There’s no fake thing per se (well truth be told I’ve only been here with someone in the know), but the real things will make you that much happier blowing your wad. Even better, your wad gets blown a lot less here than at other izakayas in the block: Musashi is cheap.

            What are the real things? Please, no California rolls. (**)

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          • Miso Omakase at Nojo


              Is it miso season? (Miso has a season?) Berkeley Bowl puts out about 10 different kinds of miso in their “international” aisle, and Nojo advertises a seasonal 5-course miso omakase menu on Black Board Eats. Usually the Black Board Eats emails go straight into the trash, which I kinda feel bad about because I signed up for their newsletter after all, but thank goodness I did read it that morning. That night I got the code, called my friend, and we went to Nojo.

              We were seated at the counter, but not the one facing the chefs, that would have been nice, this was a small counter facing the wall near the door. The wall looks pretty cool but we felt kinda weird at first, what with the other customers crowding the tables and here the three of us facing a wall next to a middle-aged man. We felt outcast. But Nojo doesn’t take reservation for party under 6, only a phone call an hour before you arrive to put your name on the waiting list, guess I should have called more than an hour earlier, what was I thinking following the rules? But the servers, inked and all, are really nice, the water was clear and sweet, the sunflowers smelled good, and the middle-aged man left minutes after we sat down.

              And the food.

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            • Time well spent at Ippuku


                “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.

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              • Little Kiraku on Telegraph


                  Not so long ago, I got chuckled at for not having tried every single restaurant in my vicinity. There are excuses I could make, but the bitter truth is I’m lazy. At school, I try to arrange my schedule to minimize the distance between buildings. I tend to eat at places either really nearby or a bus ride away. The things in between require walking. I can walk. I don’t mind eating alone. I love wandering into a restaurant unplanned. But when I wake up at 8 on Sunday, I don’t think “oh feet, let us take a stroll six blocks uphill to have lunch at who knows where”. I stay in, (try to) work, and blog. I would never have discovered Kiraku without Teppei-san: a number of us gathered there for a farewell dinner before he and Roland took off to Korea.

                  This izakaya kind of thing is more enjoyable with more people. It means more dishes. All in little bitty plates. With seven of them, we covered most bases, from tsumami (starter) to shushoku after the beer and shochu.


                  We also covered the immobiles (vegetables), the legless (octopus), the two-legged (chicken), and the four-legged (pork). Now that’s a balance meal. 😀 Jonathan’s all-time favorite (the only thing that he remembered getting from last time) was the takowasabi, chopped octopus marinated with a rather gentle wasabi sauce, which simply looked slimy and tasted clean. Similar bits of octopus later showed up in the yaki udon, with katsuobushi on a basil pesto twist.

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