Issui

This place looks more like a dessert and snack place than a traditional Japanese diner. It is uber casual and modern, with tables and booth seats in dazzling white. The menu here is pretty limited for a Japanese restaurant but the prices are fairly reasonable. We ordered the Hokkaido salad and the ikura oroshi—salmon roe with grated radish. The salad was light and refreshing with crab meat and salmon roe sprinkled over a bed of crispy lettuce. The magic was in the kanimayu dressing, a crab flavored mayonnaise with wasabi. The ikura oroshi had a really fishy smell but once in our mouths it turned into the most delectable, salty, juicy treat. The mild tasting radish was the perfect partner to the savory and intensely flavored roe. Our dessert, sabako no crepe with strawberries, mango, red bean and whipped cream was disappointing—it looked better than it tasted. This is the sort of place we would frequent if we were students looking for a place to relax and share food while we studied, but for finer dining, we would look elsewhere.