Izakaya Fishtown — Restaurant in Philadelphia

The interior looks like a dive bar variant of morimoto (Iron Chef's establishment), if you know your Japanese places in the city. Cool but a homey hole in the wall.

The food is great, but my partner has a seaweed allergy, and Chef Yanaga's Izakaya refused to accommodate (apparently he is no longer there?), instead our waitress suggested my partner order the hibachi fried rice and karange chicken— we did not go there for a kids meal. Oh and most of the menu was off limits to him; they refused to accommodate. No Maki? Fair enough, but he couldn't even enjoy the ramen because they make the broth with seaweed in it and refused to accommodate.

This issue also meant we could not do the Okonomni tasting; they refused to accommodate or swap out non-seaweed dishes for him; we had to both do it.

They have Japanese whisky too, but they are not on any menu. You'll have to ask the bartender for info. Some are inexpensive, some are pricey, if you know your whisky.

The chicken was delicious, as was the spicy sauce that came with it. We got an order to go it was so good.

The hibachi rice was gross. By that I mean it was so wet it was almost porridge.

I had a salmon avocado Maki, it was clearly homemade and delicious. Would recommend.

We had the snowcrab wonton tacos too, which were decent. And 2 orders of wagyu robata. You only get 2 skewers with 4 cubes of steak on them, but they were good.

Our total was about $140 without tip. Portions were small for the price, also we had to order more to compensate for the had rice and no okonomni.

Anyway if you have no food allergy, recommend. If you do, steer clear, as they refused to accommodate us beyond telling us what has seaweed in it. Considering we reserved a week in advance, I hoped they'd at least accommodate with the...

MEDIOCRE 3.5 Stars

I've looked forward to trying this place when I found out it was opened by Kevin Yanaga, who worked with Starr and Schulson. The place has bar seating and table seating, first come first serve, no waitlist. Would recommend going early and not during peak dinner hours. Menu is relatively small, but with a decent variety of hot and cold foods. Price is not bad as well, average $10 per plate. All dishes are small tapas style, great for sharing. Overall, there are hits and misses. Cold food was a lot better than hot food.

DINNER Toro scallion maki - MUST GET. This roll was my favorite. Very comparable to toro you would get at Omakase. Fresh, quality, and they did not skimp out on the amount

West Coast Oysters - MUST GET. My 2nd favorite item. Although the oysters are small, they are so fresh and texture so buttery, basically melted in my mouth. They clean it very well too. Would recommend getting

Hamachi sashimi - pretty fresh yellowtail sashimi. Sauce is a bit on the lighter side compared to other hamachi dishes I've had.

-Shrimp tacos - pretty good. It was unique that the taco shell is actually a fried wonton shell. I liked that it had a large piece of shrimp in it

-Karaage - pieces were huge but not as fried crispy as other karaage I've had. Batter was a bit think and kinda soggy

-Duck Bibimbap - basically duck meat mixed in rice in a shape of onigiri. Didn't really get much duck.

-Snow crab maki - snow crab didn't have much of a flavor. Kind of disappointed

-Tantan mazemen - would not recommend getting. The sesame flavor of the meat sauce overpowered everything. No depth of flavor and it wasn't that spicy.

VERDICT I probably would not go back again unless someone ask me to, and if I did, I would probably just...

Had an absolutely terrible dining experience here. The food was mediocre but the service was absolutely the worst I’ve had in years. They were staffed by one comically overwhelmed server (on a Friday night) who completely ignored a serious food allergy at our table. Now mistakes happen, and maybe there were supposed to be more servers on the floor, but after we literally followed him around the restaurant to get his attention (otherwise we never saw him after taking our order) the restaurant did absolutely nothing about the mistake. After the meal when he came over to ask if we wanted anything else we mentioned the mistake again, and he left for another 20 minutes, so we got up again to just ask for the check, which of course still had the mistake. I asked to see the manager, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever done before. Where the server was overwhelmed and incompetent, the manager was dismissive and incredibly rude and acted like our entire problem was an attitude issue. I’ve never been treated that poorly at a restaurant. There was a 20% autograt on the bill so we couldn’t express our disappointment there, so here I am, writing a bad review which I’ve also never done before. I felt so completely disrespected I seriously considered leaving without paying the bill or at least demanding they remove the autograt, but we just decided to pay the thing and leave so we could get on with our night.

There are so many great restaurants in fishtown, even other great sushi places. There is absolutely no reason...