Hanakin Japanese Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Plano

TL;DR - Seriously good Izakaya.

Like, for real. My friend discovered this place while sitting in traffic. It's in an odd location, flanked by a Wendy's, Home Depot & a Discount Tire, but do not let the location deter you. It is absolutely worth a visit. While it does not have an extensive sushi menu, it has plenty of options for a variety of desires. Keep in mind, this is Izakaya; small plates, shareable, lots of options, flavor & an experience.

Knowing that my weakness is takoyaki & karaage chicken, my friend knew this place would spark my interest & I am grateful it caught her eye. Upon entry, they advised us to sit wherever we were comfortable, which was nice. It was not crowded, but we can be loud & a little odd... so we space out accordingly for the atmosphere. It was rather quiet, with only two other tables, both of whom seemed fairly reserved. Smooth jazz was riding the airwaves, which made it easy to converse.

Started off with the takoyaki, karaage chicken, house salads & a bottle of Nigori. The takoyaki was amazing. Seasoned well, mayo on the lighter side, great cook on the ball & octo inside. The karaage chicken was flavor city, no sauce needed. Moist & delicious on the inside, perfectly crunchy on the outside. It really made me consider ordering a second serving, it was THAT good. The house salad, although common in its ingredients, put a spotlight on the appetizers with its thick dressing. While it took a minute to get everything adequately coated, the dressing stuck to everything well & made for consistent flavor during the whole salad.

We then moved onto chicken yakitori (don't skip on the sauce sitting in the serving tray), trying both the thighs & tenders. The first thing I always test with any yakitori is the ease of removing it from the skewer using chopsticks. If it is hard to remove, it is typically overcooked. Both of these, thighs & tenders, slid off the skewers fairly easily. Again, flavorful & delicious, cooked very well!

Next came the Sashimi Moriawase bowl, absolutely a show piece. Refer to the photos & video to see what I mean. This was recommended by our waitress & definitely has the wow factor to impress a date. 👍 We were so surprised by the presentation, my friend didn't even listen to the description & she had to ask the server to repeat what each cut was, but he was very nice & gladly went over it again for her, with a smile. Each piece had a unique garnish to complement the cut of fish. All were very tender & tasty!

We considered ordering a roll next, but we were teetering on the edge of full. Since the waitress had such a great suggestion on other things, we asked her again for her input. She recommended the item my friend was most intrigued by; Cheese Yaki Onigiri. This was a new, crazy experience. It's hard to describe & it doesn't sound the most appealing, but it all works together so well. It can almost serve as a dessert, in my opinion. The rice, a combination of soft & crunchy... but not undercooked crunchy, think fried crunchy. Cheese in the middle, and some sauce cooked into the rice shell, creating a sticky wall of flavor, breaking through that gets you to the cheese... this is when you level up. 🤣 Yum! What a shock, try it... you may find you like it more than you ever thought possible.

The staff was attentive, the place was clean & calm, zen like even (until we showed up)! Our waitress even switched up the jams to something a little more lively upon request. We were in celebration mode & had a great time here, really genuinely enjoyed the food & I have added this place to my list of...

Hanakin is our go-to if we don't want to drive to downtown Dallas for sushi. We love how their sushi is always so fresh.

That said, their omakase is another story. There is a lot of room for improvement. My husband made reservations for their Valentine’s Day omakase. It was $150/person for a 12 course meal (each course could be sushi or small bites). We had high hopes since we've enjoyed dining there so many times. For comparison, Tatsu is $170/person, and you get an 18 course experience.

Course 1: Miso Soup with Crab Legs. The taste of the miso soup was subpar, and the crab legs were thrown in there to "spice" it up. It was an ordeal just trying to get the meat out of the crab legs. The crab legs were not even cracked for ease of breaking it down and scooping out the meat.

Course 2: Suzuki Crudo. The fish was fresh.

Courses 3 - 7: Sushi. Great as always.

Course 8: Beef Tartare. It was a very Korean dish. Nothing wrong with it, but we were not expecting a Korean dish at a Japanese restaurant.

Course 9: Udon Salad. The taste of the salad and the chewiness of the udon were really good. However, the shrimp looked like the frozen small shrimps you get at the grocery store, and some of the black digestive tract was still present in a couple of the shrimps!

Course 10: Uni & Oyster Tempura. The tempura was not warm at all. You can tell it was sitting out for a while. The uni was dry and didn't taste fresh.

Course 11: A5 Wagyu & Rice. The wagyu was chewy and way undercooked. Wagyu is not supposed to be cooked thoroughly, but it's not supposed to be chewy either. We saw a couple of tables sending their wagyu dishes back to get it cooked just a little longer. I do believe Hanakin was rushing through this course as the restaurant was already 20-25 minutes late seating their next omakase service, and there were customers at the door waiting to get seated.

Course 12: Dessert. You get your own dessert, but also share a chocolate mousse with your date. The dessert we got on our own was good, but the shared chocolate mousse was almost dough-like. I thought mousses was supposed to be velvety smooth and fluffy? It was thick like cookie dough. Maybe it wasn't a mousse, and our waiter just gave us an incorrect dessert name?

Overall, Hanakin bit off more than they could chew with their omakase. If they had just stuck to sushi for the 12 courses and lowered their prices to $125/person, I think it would have been a wonderful experience, but instead, half of the dishes were filler dishes and those dishes...

Intimate Japanese diner serving excellent sushi and udon noodles. I was pleasantly surprised about how good everything was. Normally, when you order five to six items like we did, you would expect one or two of them to be sub-par or meh, but not here.

Our meal started with the udon noodles that our daughter always orders by default at a Japanese restaurant where it is available. From our prior experience, the flavors of these noodles do not vary much from one place to another, they are typically bland in nature and come with a few pieces of previous frozen fish cakes and narutomaki. We were astonished by the udon soup here. Not only was the broth full of flavors, but the fish cakes were plentiful as well as flavorful (a first for me in a DFW Japanese restaurant). The udon noodles were a precursor for the deliciousness to come.

We order the sashimi moriawase, which is a platter that comes with 20 to 24 pieces of fish. The sushi quality here was very good, quite comparable to other established Japanese spots that we have frequented. However, the star of the show for dinner tonight was the Suntory roll. My wife could not rave enough about this roll with its unique blend of freshness and flavorful miso sweet sauce.

However, be forewarned that quality does come at a cost. Our three person meal came to just south of $200. In this case, you really do get what...