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Health & Fitness

FOOD REVIEW: Ichibiri Japanese Restaurant

Ichibiri Japanese Restaurant in Dana Point, offers teppan grill, a nice sushi bar and regular dining. The large menu offers everything from the expected to the exotic in a fun environment.

This week took us to Ichibiri Japanese Restaurant in Monarch Bay Plaza, which was a favorite of ours when our kids were younger, but we have not been there in awhile. Ichibiri is fully decorated for the holidays and it looked bright, cheerful and festive. It is a large restaurant that offers seating at the sushi bar, at the teppan grill, or in the regular dining room. We decided on the sushi bar.

The menu is large, offering something for almost every taste. Appetizers options are golden fried large soft shell crab, pot stickers, tempura, teppan shrimp and scallops, yakitori, egg rolls and chicken wings.

Entrée options include shrimp tempura, chicken or beef teriyaki, New York steak, fresh fish, along with other Japanese dishes like sukiyaki, chicken or pork katsu, Yose-Naba and seafood kushiyaki. There is also a sushi dinner with ten pieces of assorted sushi along with your choice of tuna roll or California roll, a sashimi dinner or a sushi/sashimi dinner. All dinners come with miso soup, steamed rice and salad.

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If you are especially hungry or can’t choose just one entree, you can choose a two or three item combination dinner. These dinners also include your choice of a small portion of tempura, sushi, sashimi or California roll, in addition to the rice, soup and salad.

The sushi menu is also quite large, offering twenty-one varieties of nigiri sushi, thirty-two different rolls that can be served as a cut roll or a hand roll. In addition, there are twenty-one chef specials, which include a lot of baked rolls and more exotic choices like octopus salad and uni shooters.

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Drink options include a small wine list, including plum wine and even a couple of sparkling wines. Beers include Asahi Super Dry, Sapporo, Kirin, Kirin Light, Coors Light and a non-alcoholic beer. For sake lovers, they serve it hot or cold. Ichibiri offers premium cold sake as well as a special premium.

We chose a large Sapporo to share. Jim opted for the Banzai roll, which is filled with shrimp tempura, crabmeat, cucumber and avocado. I selected the rainbow roll, a California roll topped with tuna, yellow tail, salmon, shrimp and halibut. We were given a hot towel for our hands and were served a small dish of edamame.

The sushi bar is quite spacious and has a great view of the television as well as the rest of the restaurant. The night we visited, we had the sushi chef to ourselves. He was friendly and made our sushi quickly. We were both impressed with the attractive presentation of our rolls and the freshness of the fish. My rainbow roll was quite large, fresh, and quite tasty. My husband enjoyed his banzai roll, and decided to get one more roll, the dynamite spicy roll, made with tuna, yellow tail, cucumber and spicy sauce. The chef asked how spicy he should make it, and they decided to go pretty hot. It was beautiful, garnished with tiny slices of green onions and bright red spicy sauce. It had quite a kick to it, and we both enjoyed it. Our chef graciously prepared oranges for each of for us as a little dessert, which we both loved.

We had a nice time at Ichibiri. This is a fantastic place to bring the whole family, especially, to enjoy the teppan grill with the kids. The sushi bar is quite nice and the menu is so expansive, that there is something for almost everyone.

I give Ichibiri 3 ½ Patches out of 5.

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