Ishoni Yakiniku Review

Jason here. Finally another Bellevue restaurant review. While our family was up visiting we wanted to take them to experience a Yakiniku restaurant. We just so happen to have Ishoni here in Bellevue. It can be hard to spot from the road, but they do have parking available.

If you are interested in Yakiniku restaurants in general, go check out our Yakiniku reviews from Japan.

Ishoni has approximately 6 large tables for guests, which seat six guests comfortably. We definitely recommend you go with a group of 4 or more, so you can make reservations a couple days in advance and get a table for your group. The way ordering works is this: you receive a large menu which lists all of the various items to order. While you could order something just for yourself, it’s much better to have everyone order 1 or 2 items at a time and then split it up amongst the group. This will help you try out the largest variety of the delicious and fresh dishes Ishoni offers.

If you feel like you need soy sauce, I would bring a small packet of gluten free Tamari or Soy sauce with you. Due to the freshly prepared nature of the food, and that you cook it on the grill in front of yourself, most of the items are gluten free. In general though you will have to make sure you order the salt & pepper versions, or make sure to ask your waiter to be sure the sauce versions are gluten free.

Our meal was delicious. We ordered a large variety of items including beef tongue, duck, chicken with butter, mackerel, cuttlefish, and a vegetable combo. My favorite of course was the beef tongue, but cuttlefish came in a surprising second. I had not had cuttlefish before, and found it to taste very similar to other shellfish. The duck was very succulent, so I recommend it as well. In fact, every item we received was fresh, and clearly higher grade. The beef was extremely marbled, the chicken juicy, the vegetables fresh, and on and on.

Not only was our food delicious, but the price was excellent. Considering the quality of the food here, what you pay is a steal. Kayleigh and I hope to make Ishoni a regular spot for us now.

Kayleigh here. We were just ecstatic to find out that there was a Yakiniku restaurant this close to home, after making some lovely memories at ones during out honeymoon. While we really took a risk going here, we found that almost none of the dishes came with any sort of sauce or marinade beyond a simple oils, salt, and pepper. We still made sure to ask about everything we ordered (and found that the starter miso soup was not safe), and were lucky enough to have the entire table willing to stick with gluten free choices. If you end up going with a group that wants to order something unsafe, make sure to designate a gluten free grill and tongs at the table, to avoid cross contamination. I am willing to bet that you can ask for an additional pair of tongs to just use on gluten items, too.

Safe Travels in Japan - Numazu Uogashizushi and Matsuya Yakiniku Sute-ki

Numazu Uogashizushi

(website seems to be all in Japanese- we went to this location)

Jason here. On our first day in Japan, we talked with our hotel and they helped us set up a reservation at an upscale sushi place and confirmed they could accommodate my gluten allergy. I highly recommend you check with your hotel, and see if they offer a similar customer service. The restaurant our hotel helper found was Numazu Uogashizushi, which was conveniently located only a block or so away.

We arrived a bit early, but they accommodated us and confirmed we were the reservation that required a gluten free meal. Already we were off to a great start, because I could tell they would take extra care with my meal. We were seated at a bar like table, which surrounded the chef’s preparation area so we could watch them work their magic.

If the Yakiniku place was for me, then this was for Kayleigh as the English menu contained an uncountable variety of fish and seafood. We ordered a sushi set, which came with eel and tamagoyaki removed as they were not gluten free. The set came with fatty tuna, salmon, squid, prawn, scallop, regular tuna, and mackerel.

I quickly shuffled the prawn over to Kayleigh, as I had already learned it was not my favorite. I really enjoyed all of the raw fish. The texture and taste were nothing like a cooked white fish. Instead they reminded me more of a steak taste then a fish taste.

By far though, my favorite sushi was the fatty tuna. They were so sweet and succulent, they tasted like they were filled with a cream cheese. If you ever can’t the chance definitely order some fresh fattier tuna sushi.

Kayleigh here. There really is something to be said for well prepared, simply presented sushi. Typically, going to a sushi joint is not particularly high on my to-do list, and going to one while in Japan felt almost, well, weeaboo. But the choice cuts, lightly flavored rice, and unrushed atmosphere made it a fantastic dinner experience. My only regret is that I did not remember what the white fish was on the plate- it had the most astounding strong flavor to it. I would have been content just having a full meal of that one!

Matsuya Yakiniku Sute-Ki

(website is in Japanese- cannot seem to find an english link)

Jason here. After striking out at our planned restaurant in the Gion district of Kyoto, we happened upon yet another yakiniku place. Still remembering fondly the last yakiniku place Gyu-Kaku, I practically begged Kayleigh to stop here. The restaurant was called Matsuya Yakiniku Sute-ki.

As we arrived just before last order and closing, we quickly placed an order of salted thickly cut beef tongue, Harashi beef with sesame sauce, and a seafood platter of prawn, salmon, and squid. They do have and English menu available, and our waiter spoke limited English. 

My favorite dish of the night was not what I expected. After Gyu-Kaku I was sure I was going to be favoring the beef tongue again. It was still delicious to be sure, but something about it being thickly cut just wasn’t the same. This night my favorite dish was the Harashi beef with sesame sauce. After eating at so many restaurants where I could not have sauces, this really stood out to me. The beef itself was very succulent, and I applied a good deal of sesame sauce to make it perfect to my liking.

Kayleigh here. I never get sick of seafood, so I knew the sampler platter of simply prepared cuts would be my first choice. As with many of the restaurants in Japan, we could start to pick and choose what we might be able to order via a display of plastic plates of food at the main entrance, even before we were committed to going in. We could tell what restaurants were more likely to have a gluten free option by the types of food on display.

Safe Travels in Japan - Gyu Kaku

Gyu Kaku

(here is the english menu for locations in Japan)

Jason here. Now I get to review my favorite restaurant from our Japan trip, the yakiniku joint Gyu-Kaku. It took a bit to find, as it was on the third or fourth floor of a building situated off of a side road. By some miracle, a friendly local saw what must have been our obviously lost faces, and came over to give us directions. I’m not sure how, but as soon as we mentioned the restaurant name, he pointed to exactly where it was around the corner, and gave perfect instructions. This was in an area with what must have been 2 or 3 dozen restaurants within a block radius.

At a yakiniku restaurant, you order a variety of meats and vegetables which are brought to your table raw. You then cook these over a grill located at your table.
The restaurant itself utilized every inch of space, with tightly packed booths of customers, and a long bar which also had grills to sit and order food at. Gyu-Kaku was crazy busy, with new customers coming in as soon as some left. We must have arrived at just the right moment, as we were seated immediately. The pace at which customers came, foreshadowed just how good the food was going to be.
The menu had an option for unlimited food and alcohol for a set price, and we made sure to communicate no soy sauce. This is important since some dishes may be marinated in soy sauce when they are brought to the table. Gyu-Kaku has an English menu available, and there was some limited English spoken by our waiter.

We ordered beef tongue, pork, black-haired beef, scallops, shrimp, squid, bacon cubes, basil chicken, and sweet potato.

For an unlimited meal we only had a set amount of time to eat them, so we got right to cooking setting a good variety down on the grill to start.

I loved the ability to cook my own food here, as it meant I could take things off as early or as late as I want. Controlling how raw, or crispy I wanted a particular dish.

The scallops, shrimp, and squid were good, but tasted exactly like you would expect. Like everywhere we went in Japan, the shrimp were served whole so we had to figure out a way to de-shell them. I’m not sure if we followed etiquette and procedure as we did so.

The basil chicken was extremely good. This wasn’t your grocery market packaged chicken that comes out tasting dry. No this was excellently prepared chicken, where each bite bursts with flavor in your mouth. Even after I not so excellently burned a few of the pieces by leaving them on the grill too long. No matter what, these pieces kept their flavor.

The bacon cube, were massive. Easily an inch or more on each side. I left them on the grill for a while to get nice and crisp on the outside, but still juicy on the inside. Even Kayleigh enjoyed these. I’ve never had bacon that thick so it was a great experience.

I definitely recommend you pick up a side order of sweet potato fries. The various meats are delicious, but you will need a pallet cleanser now and again after eating so many foods of the salty variety. You can leave the sweet potatoes on the grill for as long as your heart desires, so you get perfectly crispy fries each time.

By far my favorite of the night was unexpectedly the thinly sliced beef tongue. Even better than the black-haired beef.  Only about a millimeter or so thick, these round slices of beef tongue grill up nice and crispy. They tasted like the most succulent steak I had ever had. If I had to pick one meal to live off of the rest of my life, it might be these.

While the meal was expensive, between the unlimited drinks and food, and the absolutely superb taste I can’t recommend Gyu-Kaku enough.

Kayleigh here. While this place was definitely Jason heaven, I thought it was such a novel concept to be allowed to use a hot grill and consume smoking food as you got progressively more intoxicated.  Seriously, though, we decided to simplify things by ordering everything at the start, and they brought the dishes out one or two at a time at the same pace we were going through them.

It was a fantastically novel experience to be able to cook your own food, since it brought a fun activity to the table. Especially when we were pulling the sweet potato slices out of their foil bowl and grilling them one by one- then had the waiter quietly let us know we were supposed to just put the bowl onto the grill. We found it embarrassingly funny to have made that faux pas, made all the more funny because we were sure we had been messing up some part of every meal since we flew in and had noone to point it out to us.

Since we ended up ordering a pretty good sampling of them here, now would be a good time to mention the chuhai. Short for Shochu Highball, it's a mixer made from a sweet potato-based alcohol and comes in a variety of fruit flavors. They are refreshing, deceptively alcoholic, and less of a girly drink than the usual wine cooler. We bought them in canned form at convenience stores and mixed at bars and never found any issues with gluten. It was great to have such a tasty beer alternative!