Located on the second floor of one of the numerous Chinatown/Koreatown strip malls on Spring Mountain Rd., this late-night hangout is very popular with students and a young crowd. While sushi and sashimi menu items available, the house specialty is small plates and you'll find the walls plastered in an ever-changing array of daily specials, from beef liver skewers and yakitori squid, to grilled salmon belly marinated in sake lees to buttered clams, and mixed mushrooms steamed with lemon, to adegashi tofu. Check out the "honey toast" signature dessert, too, which is the only item many of the younger crowd come in for.
This restaurant was reviewed in the July, 2008 LVA; some of the information contained in this review may no longer be accurate. This is a distinctly different kind of Japanese eatery. Ichiza has a bar where you can order sushi, but that’s not the main event here. In fact, sushi is only a small part of the numbered menu that runs to #166, not including the dozens of daily specials advertised on pieces of paper tacked up on the walls. Forget California roll. How about chicken gizzard, “most tender” beef tongue, okra with fermented soy beans (natto), or squid soft-bone fritter. You can order full meals of noodles, stir fry, tofu, or sushi/sashimi, but it’s more interesting to treat it like tapas, where you sample several dishes—other than the big sashimi plates, nothing on the menu costs $10 and many items are in the $1.50 to $4.50 range. What’s good? That depends on how adventuresome you are. We like the skewers (tongue, liver, gizzard) to start. They’re small and only $1.25-$1.50 apiece, so you can try a few. Some of the better specials are dice-cut beef steak with ponzu sauce ($9.50), broiled tomatoes & eggplant with mozzarella ($5), and four different kinds of mushrooms ($4.95)—this place works for vegetarians. And even though we’ve downplayed the fish, it’s hard to pass up an order of the sashimi plates that go from $5 for octopus and squid to $8.50 for tuna and come with five or six big slabs of fish. Or try the roll-your-own hand-roll platters ($12-$21). If you have room, there’s a good dessert called honey toast, which is a big biscuit with ice cream in the middle (the first time we went, a young couple ordered it first, then the rest of their meal). One of the best parts of Ichiza is the scene, which is an energized mix of Asian and Caucasian, both young and old. A friendly staff hustles out sake and Japanese beer (from 5 to 7 pm, Kiren is just $1.95) to the tables, where you sit on big wooden benches. The restaurant is located on the second floor of the mini-complex directly west of Spring Mountain’s Chinatown Plaza.