Izakaya Nonbei — Restaurant in Honolulu

First visit here after their renovation.

We ordered many dish but none of them really stood out except sashimi which was fresh and generous portion.

All other dishes serving portion was surprisingly very small... even smaller portion than Izakaya in Tokyo...

Ordered “use” Chazuke towards the end. I tasted very bland as the stock didn’t taste like it had enough dashi taste. I would have enjoyed it with the “tea” poured into it especially this ochazuke was like rice with hot water, plum and wasabi.

Chazuke normally accompanied with few pieces of pickles... but not this place. When you order pickles set, you get big plate full of mixed Japanese pickles. This was bizarre because it had so much pickles that even 4 people couldn’t finish.

Kinpira was disappointing as it taste like they just used the premixed sauce to stir fry the burdock. Serving was surprisingly small. We were all surprised.

Lastly it is a noisy place - very hard to hear each other. It is up to you to call it lively or noisy... I don’t recommend this place for a quiet people.

Maybe it was a good place before..?? Maybe the kitchen staff changed after the renovation .. who knows. I didn’t get to understand the good reviews.

Anyway, it was casual and home style which is good. Not sure if I chose to go back but it was just good experience to try...

If an old school Japanese experience is what you're looking for then this is the right place to dine. The menu features a big selection from fresh Sashimi, steamed/simmered Fish, broiled grilled meat, to perfectly fried items, and many other home-style dishes. Our party ordered Agedashi Tofu, Tori Kara, Hamachi Kama, Naso Kinoko, Yakitori, Sashimi platter, Green salad, Karei Karaage, and a few other items. This is my favorite way to eat, sharing small dishes with some nice Sake. The Karei Karaage (crispy fried flounder) was my favorite dish, but the Hamachi Kama, and Naso Kinoko were also delicious.

The service was fast and friendly. My friend told me that the restaurant itself had been renovated, but it used to have a traditional Japanese feel.

Overall a really nice experience and a very good...

I’ll start this off by saying we either got really unlucky, or I just wouldn’t recommend this place. We went to order some sushi after carefully picking exactly what we wanted and that was when the server decided to let us know that they were OUT of SUSHI RICE… How can you have a sushi restaurant without sushi rice, I digress, we then wanted a tartare and they were out of that, so the waiter recommended this wasabi octopus tartare to which we stupidly enough agreed on… It was the the worst dish of sushi that I’ve ever tried. I’ll admit that the Wafu Steak was pretty good but that’s where I’d draw the line. As a finishing touch, they got some reason decided to bring our chicken skewers about 5 minutes after we were done finishing all the other dishes we got AND it was cold. Either a bad night, or a...