Kiraku — Restaurant in Berkeley

The hostess asked us in the beginning if it it our first time to here. She told us the minimum charge per person is $30 after I reply “yes”. It is totally fine for me because I read many good reviews about this restaurant on yelp and little red note. The space is very limited and the hostess required every customer to sit in the table that she managed. It is totally fine for me also. This is my first time to this place. There was no any picture of food on the menu. How did I know which one was popular and how big was the portion? Also, the menu has too many Japanese loanwords as keywords without pictures, it was hard to understand.

Then, I figured out that checked the doordash menu and selected the popular dishes because they uploaded all pictures to doordash. I showed my doordash list to the first waitress. She said the menus for dine in and to go were different. She made me totally confused. I said I had no idea on the dine in menu because there were too much japanese. She said not only japanese but english. Come on! Do you mean “Don”and “Hamachi”are English. I said please just order for us. Then, she said she would give us more time and left. If I did not use the hot towels, I would just leave. You can just pointed out the dishes on DoorDash and told us which dish that we selected were unavailable for dine in instead waiting for us. And, when I asked for help” please order for us”, you can just ordered for us based on your waitress experience. Please do not be lazy to use your brain. Please learn from Nippon Curry.

Then, I ordered the same dishes with the second young waitress. She just pointed the dishes and confirmed with us. We got the dishes quickly, and the second young lady was the only one person to add water and keep attentive on our area.

One more thing, the hostess told us the minimum charge per person was $30, but no one told us the service charge (18%) was mandatory.

$110 including mandatory service charge, sales tax, and 4 small portion dishes are ridiculous because the service was poor and the space was limited!!!!

I just want to pay the tips to the second young lady.

It is very suck to have a dinner in this...

Such a treat to eat here, I was feeling a little homesick (disclaimer, not from Japan) but taking myself out for dinner here really cheered me up.

As the previous reviews seem to state some different information from my experience, I will say there didn't seem to be an extra charge to use my credit card, but there is a minimum order of $20 per person, which becomes $25 for groups of 6 or more. It gets very busy and there will inevitably be a long queue, so make sure you reserve a spot!

I ordered a lot for my party of one: the yuzu salmon tostada, fried chicken cartilage, the shrimp tempura with mayo, and the uni carbonara pasta. For an izakaya place I was hoping to sample more of the alcohol on offer, but I could only manage 1 pint of Asahi. The flavours are well balanced, and the batter was the delicate kind of crispy which you'd expect for izakaya snacks. Paired well with the beer too! I had a great time alternating between the fried stuff and taking in the busy atmosphere. It is quite loud so do prepare to order in a loud voice, but ultimately I view it as part and parcel of the vibe.

Unfortunately my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I didn't manage to eat the uni carbonara in-house, so I did ask for it to go. The staff were very lovely and accommodating to pack it up for me, and it did come with the welcome warning that the fresh uni would not last for very long. If they're reading this, I'd like them to know that as soon as I got home I mustered up the space to finish the ikura and uni with some of the pasta and it was bloody delicious. Chefs, I'm sorry for the trouble that I caused, but know that your effort and ingredients did not go to waste.

I happened to be able to make some room for dessert, so I ordered a matcha Mont Blanc. It had just the right texture and sweetness and wasn't comically huge so it was a great end to the meal. The waitresses seemed amused by my defeat in the face of my rather ambitious order, but the service really made me feel something special. Thanks so much for making my...

Kiraku is one of the most exciting and innovative Japanese restaurants in the Bay Area. It's completely unassuming and the decor is pretty plain, but you can instantly tell from the constantly out-the-door lines that there's something special here. I love everything about Kiraku -- the service is phenomenal (the owners are such sweet people), the ingredients are incredibly fresh, and the dishes are wildly inventive yet somehow seems to maintain such a strong sense of authenticity that they should definitely not be considered "fusion fare."

I've been to Kiraku so many times now that my list of favorite dishes extends much longer than I'm able to type, but just know that it's really hard to go wrong here. The sashimi is unbelievably fresh, so make sure you throw in some sashimi slices into your order (Amberjack, Black Throat, Salmon, Toro, etc.). The Braised Kurobuta Pork is incredibly tender, the Amberjack Kama (Collar) is delicious, the Tempura Corn is perfectly crispy, and it really just goes on and on. The more you eat here, the more you'll be able to pick out your personal favorites, since there are just so many items on the menu.

My personal addiction here is their Fried Chicken Cartilage. It's super simple, but they just cook it so perfectly. It's seasoned and breaded so well that it's tough to imagine that something so easy could be so addictively delicious. Of course, you'd have to love the crunchy-meets-rubbery texture of chicken cartilage to really appreciate this awesome dish.

Make sure you end your meal with Kiraku's subtly-sweet, perfectly-textured Sweet Potato Creme Brulee.

With all of the incredible restaurants in the Berkeley area, Kiraku stands out because it has fresh, delicious Japanese food that's genuinely innovative and prepared so intricately. It's definitely one of the very best restaurants in...