Icho Izakaya — Restaurant in Temple City

Overall, a Pleasant experience. I am from Texas and went for Sunday brunch with my dad who loves this place

Great value- so they have this 13.99 lunch deal where you get salad (which was pretty good with mixed greens), miso soup, rice, and your choice of picking 2 items from the menu which has a wide range of items: sushi roll, Saba, salmon collar, curry, sashimi, etc. I ordered sashimi and salmon collar while my dad got spicy Tuna sushi roll and saba.

-salmon collar is the best. It's a fatty piece of tuna that is rich with crispy skin. Usually this cut is more expensive but you can get it as part of the lunch package. Totally worth the value.

-Saba is pretty good if you like that kinda fish. It's a leaner fish but the size is decent. I thought it was good as I've had Saba at other places which the fish is so much smaller and more poorly done. However, the Saba here is very fresh

-sashimi- very fresh. You get 5 pieces of thick cuts

-spicy tuna roll- it's pretty fresh but I would order something else. You can get spicy tuna roll well done anywhere

Service- good. Our servers may not have been the super friendly upbeat variety, but they were attentive. Drinks were refilled promptly and trash and dirty plates collected.

Environment- range from casual to formal. They have 2 huge tvs (playing something on the Chinese channel?) which we know is super classy. However, I think they do formal events as well and there are pockets of areas in the dinning room that are dimmer and quiet. I thought our meal was enjoyable and table well situated.

Parking- plentiful. The restaurant itself is situated right next to a dollar store.

I would definitely recommend for a Sunday luncheon with family or an outing with friends for like a birthday. Pretty satisfied with food quality, price...

This place is actually a solid sushi spot. The fish is incredibly fresh and their sashmi slices are the biggest I've ever seen in my life (roughly the size of the palm of your hand, HUGE!)

What makes this place bad is they're expensive. Very expensive. More expensive than Sushi Gen or any sushi place you'll find in Little Tokyo.

They charge per piece. So $3.60 for 1 piece of salmon, I mean that's kind of ridiculous. Sashimi prices start around $6 per piece.

BUT with all that put aside. The reason this place gets 4 stars is because they have the best seafood specials I've ever seen in a sushi restaurant. On top of that they have a pretty extensive menu outside of sushi. Since this restaurant is Taiwanese owned they have a lot of great Taiwanese food options. They also have a fantastic selection of grilled fish. A good number of them I've never even heard of before which I really like that variety and uniqueness of the fish selection.

Back to the specials, on Wednesday (which my group got this) they have $1 Canadian Oysters. And they're SUPER GOOD. That is a really great deal and it is worth the drive to get the specials here.

Tuesday, they have Lobster half priced served 2 different ways. It'll roughly cost about $12-$15. That's a really good deal, too. You can get the sashimi + soup, or another lobster combination.

Fantastic menu selection with both Japanese and Taiwanese menu items and the best seafood specials I've ever seen at any sushi restaurant that's worth the drive just to get. They do run out,...

Tried out this place due to a recommendation from some friends. And came out here to celebrate my grandmother's birthday. Be aware if you bring a cake, it probably won't be in a fridge because our birthday cake was room temp by the time we were done with our meal..

Our order: Sashimi boat, salmon fried rice and tempura plate

The sashimi boat, which supposedly feeds 4 people.. We had a party of 4 adults and 1 kid. For $200, it seems pricey, but there's A LOT of sashimi on there. All the fish and shellfish were fresh. On the boat, there were the generics of yellow tail, salmon, and tuna; but also they had a whole small lobster sashimi, whole small snapper, marinated fish liver, a few slices of geoduck, and two sweet shrimp. A nice to have would be that the boat is organized that you can pick from it from both sides.. The carcass of the lobster, snapper, and the shrimp gets made into a second dish. We did porridge for the lobster (a little too peppery for my taste), and the shrimp/snapper carcass was fried. The tempura was well made, batter was light and everything came out hot. Would've been nice if there was a spoon for the sauce.. The salmon fried rice was also a bit pepper for my taste but it was still good.

I'll probably go back again but this time only ordering the sashimi boat or a chirashi bowl for two people, then we wouldn't need to order...