Ice or Rice Cafe — Restaurant in Cleveland

Ice or Rice attempts to fill the Japanese cuisine void in Asia Town. I'd enjoyed their okonomiyaki at Night Markets before, but unfortunately, my experience at their new brick and mortar wasn't bad, but compared to other alternatives, everything was very solidly in the okay camp.

There's no parking lot here, so you'll have to park on the street. The inside is new and renovated but still feels a little tacky, with bare walls and the gray banquette not quite thicc-friendly. The pop music was playing at an awkwardly low volume to get into, so instead our background noise was the employees speaking in Cantonese with each other. The staff are very friendly and patient, allowing you to leisurely browse the menus.

Everything is made to order, which means it's fresh - but also, that when I wanted my tuna poke, it hadn't thawed out yet and I had to opt for salmon instead.

After ordering at the counter, you can take a seat and food will be brought directly to your table. The Spam Musubi was good, but similar to what my friends and I have made, and the sushi was also satisfying but would not be my go to for either high quality sushi or for cheap but filling sushi. I was hoping the poke bowl would come with more than just fish and rice, but instead found myself paying for each topping rather than having some options built into the base price like at other places. We were excited to try the highly advertised okonomiyaki - but they realized they had forgotten to tell the kitchen after we were waiting around after finishing our other items and finally asked them about its status.

Ultimately, food was fine but I left feeling underwhelmed by the offerings and hiccups in workflow. Hoping to see some new items and improvement in the future...

Ate across the street but saw this spot had good reviews and thought we'd try a desert here. Took 28 minutes for a mango shaved ice to show up, and when it finally does the lady that brings it to me says "mango is out of season right now it's not very good". Well...ok, I guess the better time to tell me that was almost a half hour ago not AS YOU ARE HANDING ME THE DISH, but here we are. Fruit was brown. Never seen brown mango before, tasted very off and it left a nasty after taste, oily somehow. The shave ice is literally a giant pile of just ice (in case you were thinking hopefully that it's like a Hong Kong snoh or something cool like that, it's not) whole dish had zero flavor. It had a scoop of mid tier ice cream on it so that's something I guess?

Staff (owners?) watched us take a couple of bites, make a face and get up to leave and didn't address that we were clearly not even remotely happy with it. Waste of 10$, waste of 30 minutes of our lives, waste of real estate that an actually half way decent food establishment could use.

As far as the restaurant goes, zero decor or ambiance, our table was sticky and the whole place smelled of fish about 3 days past it's best by date. Honestly I blame myself for not just turning around and leaving

Don't eat here, there are so many other wonderful spots in the area that deserve your business and this is not...

I went with a friend because onigiri is my favorite food and I saw that this restaurant said they made it fresh. It was delicious! I tried tuna, salmon, and pork. I ordered takeout tuna onigiri and veggie okonomiyaki for another friend, who loved it as well. The food was yummy and the service was really kind and friendly. I had a very pleasant experience. I am going to come back here all the time! I'm so happy there's a restaurant in Cleveland that makes onigiri...... lifechanging

Edit 2025: I have been here many, many times now over the year. It’s my favorite place to go and take friends—every person I’ve brought loves it! My top recommendations are the takoyaki and onigiri, and their tiramisu and strawberry shaved ice is nice. My friends have enjoyed the poke bowls, loco moto, chicken katsu, and...