Ippuku

"Came here for my 31st birthday dinner on Wednesday, January 17th! Ippuku is one of those places I always walked by when I was a student at Cal (c/o 2015, GO BEARS!), and have been meaning to try. It was super easy to make reservations ahead of time. I had booked the Treehouse seating, since it was just a party of 2 for me and my husband, which I'm glad I did because it made the experience more intimate, private, and reminded me of an izakaya in Japan. My husband and I went to Japan spring of 2023, and miss the food very much. Ippuku is probably as close as we can get to Japan, in the East Bay! Vibes: very mixed crowd. I saw many college students that were dressed super casually (think sweats, probably gonna go back to the library later to study), as well as well-dressed older couples. My husband and I definitely fit in with the latter since we wanted to dress up a little for my birthday. Ippuku has an expansive whiskey bar, so we had to snap a photo or two there. It took us awhile to get seated because the restaurant was packed, but once we were seated, our waiter was very attentive given how busy they were. I would rate service 4/5 because of the long wait time to get seated and because the waiter forgot to include one item of our order, and it was an item that takes longer than typical to come out (the grilled onigiri). When the onigiri finally came out, we had already finished eating everything else so it was a bit underwhelming. But overall, we enjoyed everything we ordered and would definitely want to visit Ippuku again in the future."

"A big fan of Japanese food, I still had never gone to a real down home Japanese style grill like this before, with the kind of meats that I don't often order, like chicken hearts, chicken livers, quail eggs, and radish roots, all cooked over a wood grill, and all of which came fresh, because they butcher on site. If you want to catch all the flavors which is usually what I want to do, order the chef's choice, and they will bring you skewers with several different delights, chicken, hearts, gizzards, and other delights. The sake menu is to die for, we chose the Ginjo, smooth full-bodied high-end sake. Highly recommend this place, it has very cozy booths, and a warm interior and the staff is super nice. When you want Japanese, what you want to try something that is a far cry from the college sushi joints that abound in this area try Ippuku. You will not be disappointed."

"The food was so delicious and innovative! The cocktails were very well balanced, one of the best I have ever had, and being an mixologist myself, I have high standards when it comes to cocktails;) We had to wait about 50min to get seated, and it's not cheap, but I say it's worth the wait and money. It's so precious to find unique, authentic, creative and quality ethnic food nowadays. Highly recommend!"

"Delicious and authentic small plates! This was our first visit and we were impressed with each dish. The portions are small but certainly decadent. The most disappointing aspect was the $10 ice cream scoops which were two small and meager scoops. My favorite was the squid ink fried rice – super tasty!"

"A very pleasant experience. Japanese cuisine is not something I eat a lot of (sushi-aside) but everything here was well prepared. The skewers were maybe lacking in some flavour/seasoning to my tastes but the service was very good and I would recommend the restaurant to anyone visiting Berkeley. I was in the area for a concert (Del Amitri at Cornerstone) and am glad we picked this as our pre-concert meal."