Izakaya Sakura -- San Diego

Izakaya Sakura
3904 Convoy St #121
San Diego, CA 92184
Yelp it!

This place has no sign. So unless you read about it or heard about it, there's no way you'd ever really know it's there. In my case, I yelped it because yelp is slowly becoming my life, and in trying to decide where we could go for Japanese near Convoy area to eat today, we decided to try it out. If you decide to give this place a shot, it's located in the plaza with Wings n Things & Original House of Pancakes, across from the Target on Convoy.

To start off, an izakaya is basically like... a Japanese tapas. It's traditionally primarily a bar, or pub, and you order a bunch of random dishes/sides to go with the alcohol. Sakura certainly serves alcohol, but it's not much of a bar environment - more like a family restaurant. I'd have to say the best testament to the quality of food here is the fact when we were there, it was about 3/4 full, despite the lack of any sort of sign or indication that there is a Japanese restaurant there. 

Here's what we ordered:

Tofu Salad - drizzled with a Sesame Ginger type dressing. My guess would be Angelo Pietro's Sesame Miso dressing, which is amazing.. or some close variation. 

Zaru Soba - cold soba noodles with seaweed on top. Mixed the wasabi & green onions into the sauce, and poured it over the noodles. Light and simple! 

Seabass Gome Saute - sauteed seabass in a sesame sauce and potato salad

This didn't really taste like it was sauteed in a sesame sauce, so we might have actually gotten the Seabass Shioyaki which is salt-grilled seabass, but I'm actually not that sure. Either way, it was really good - moist and flavorful!

Saba Misoni - mackerel with a miso sauce topped with ginger and green onions

 This was deeeelicious. The fish just fell apart, and together with the miso sauce and green onions, it had really good flavor. 

 

Goma Yakiniku - barbecue beef with sesame sauce toped with green onions

This was recommended to us by our waitress, and it was excellent, just as she'd promised! I enjoyed the fish a little more because I prefer the softer texture, but this was also praise-worthy! 

Spicy Tuna don - spicy tuna atop rice and lettuce, topped with seaweed & green onions

Mixed Sushi - tuna, mackerel, yellowtail, salmon, red snapper, albacore, sea urchin, and roe

I'm a little torn on this one. The sashimi was very fresh, which seems harder and harder to come by as more sushi places pop up. I also liked that they just gave a little bit of rice with each piece, so that you were really tasting the fish. My qualm about this was that it was $22 for the 8 pieces. I'm definitely no penny pincher for good food, but this was definitely on the steep side for me... perhaps because it's not something I eat often. The pieces were generously sized though, and they just melt in your mouth! Warning: they also put generous portions of wasabi underneath some of the sashimi, so if you're not a fan, be careful!

The lowdown: 

The place serves some pretty authentic quality Japanese food, but it definitely comes at a price. The dishes are basically all sampler sizes, so if you're really hungry, you should probably pass on this place unless you have cash to burn. You can get just a dish or 2 and come in under $10-15, but the idea is to try a bunch of different things, so if you go, you want to be ready to do so! It's definitely worth going to sometime, so keep it in mind if you're looking to treat yourself! The bill for 3 people came out to $76 for what you see above + a sapporo. Also, if there's a good amount of people in the restaurant, anything you order involving sashimi (raw fish) will most likely take a good 15-20 minutes.

The verdict: I'll be back!

Lunch Menu

 

Dinner Menus

 --fatty monkey out