Ichiriki Japanese Nabe Restaurant — Restaurant in Honolulu

A friend wanted to have shabu shabu so we turned to friends and social media, and found this gem.

ATMOSPHERE: Don't be fooled by the plain exterior. A long central hall divides the Japanese-themed room in half, one side a tatami room (no footwear and you sit on the floor on leg less chairs) which are more for big groups, the other side with tables and booths. All gas stoves are the individual portable kind.

MENU: A mix of Japanese apps, shabu shabu, desserts.

FOOD: Mushroom Medley This was an excellent starter dish. The mixture of enoki and other Japanese mushrooms were done in a delicious butter sauce. Yum.

Avocado Maguro My spouse asked if this was a "roll" and was told yes, but it was not. It's like a pokē with chunky slices of fresh avocado and topped with white & green onions. Very fresh but we added shoyu for some flavor.

Ribeye Chanko The platter comes not only with ribeye but also includes ground & diced chicken, 1 shrimp, tofu, clear noodles, aburaage, enoki & portobello mushrooms, won bok, sausage, and green onions.

Chicken Chanko Chicken slices with similar additional veggies as the other chanko options.

Ramen & Udon Noodles A small handful of fresh noodles completes your meal which is I guess a way to fully utilize the broths.

Rice Each pot comes with only 1 bowl of rice, so we ordered extra. Brown rice is available.

BROTHS: Since we had a party of 4 and 2 burners, we opted for the ginger broth and the spicy shoyu broth. I wasn't sure if I'd like the ginger broth but it's very subtle, clean, not overly gingery, marries well to the meats & veggies, and actually ended up being my favorite of the two. The spicy shoyu broth has a nice savory flavor and was spicy only if you bit on a chili flake. The broth itself wasn't spicy at all.

ORDERING: The process starts with choosing your broth flavor, set (meats, veggies, etc.,) then a noodle type (ramen, udon, or zosui which is a porridge.)

Your server will explain the cooking process & suggested tips for a great meal.

SERVICE: Everyone we encountered were very friendly and professional.

RESERVATIONS: We walked in on a Sunday around 4:30pm so there was a very minimal wait but the place was still pretty occupied.

TIP: One order is more than enough for two to share. Even though the menu pictures look like small portions, you do fill up especially if you eat rice.

OVERALL: Highly recommended! Awesome food, great service, and the four of us left stuffed & satisfied all for about $65....

Mediocre food and awful service! We heard a lot of good things about this place, but ended up with a disappointing experience.

First thing first, the only good thing (and the reason for a 2 star review instead of one) was the hostess. She’s absolutely wonderful, and accommodated with our changing schedule due to unforeseen circumstances.

But the good experience stopped after the beginning. We were seated and left unattended for a while before a server came to us and rushed us into ordering. We ordered two Sukiyaki sets, and waited forever for our food to come, which by the way, was all raw ingredients. It is said on the wall that the servers cannot cook for us due to Covid, which we totally understand. However, we were given zero instructions on how to cook the Sukiyaki. The server left our raw food with us and left. The only cooked food we ordered, the chicken karaage, was soggy and a laughably small portion.

For 60 dollars, we got 14 slides of paper thin beef, some Napa cabbage, some carrots, a couple of slices of tofu, a little bit of starch noodles and half the portion of regularly udon worth of noodle noodles, four mushrooms, and TWO leaves of some green vegetables. We were sitting there and saw the table behind us ordered the same set, and got significantly more vegetables than we did. The inconsistency of portion size is super sub par for a restaurant with such high reviews.

The awful service didn’t stop at the beginning. For a hot pot restaurant, they didn’t even bother to take care of our pot, and we had to search for the server for 10 minutes to ask for more broth, during which the pot also dried up completely. And we spent another 10 minutes trying to ask for the check. It felt like we were just left there on our own, and nobody cared if we are having an okay experience or not.

The food itself is just okay. The beef was super dry after cooked, and the broth was flavorless at the beginning, and way too sweet after we tried to refill but couldn’t get one. We left hungry and unsatisfied by what we had.

Overall, super super disappointed. Really hope this experience is just an outlier, but for what we got, it’s just overpriced mediocre food with...

Good hot Pot food here, you can choose your Combo Meal here & or order Ala Carte also. We've been to this location before, & I do enjoy coming here @Ichiriki near Ala Moana Shopping Center.

Just remember to call in for a RSVP, we didn't because we are "Spur" of the moment Foodie kind of peeps here, haha.

My Hubby didn't care for the Soup that much, (a lil more on the Saltier side, maybe), But I enjoyed everything from this Restaurant, Food, our Wonderful Waitress (JAIMIE!!!), she So Awesome & Nice & very informative about the Menu Selections, etc, including the Desserts we didn't order any because we were SO full from our Dinner! Lol!

Other than that, please give this place a try if you've never been here before, sit down & dine-in, Relax & start Cooking your Hot Pop goodies right away :).

Luckily for me, my Husband Cooks our Hot Pot food for us, cause he loves to Cook & I suck at Cooking anything, I just am not good at Cooking :D.

P.S. - Please say, "Thank you" to our Wonderful Waitress "JAIMIE", she's a very good worker there & knows her job well & interacts with ppl great!!! P.S.S. - Thank you also to the Manager dude (with Da Aloha Shirt) that evening, he would make his rounds all around the tables to check-in on his Customers!! Thank you, Ichiriki, you guys Rock!! Aloha...