The Izakaya

This place is great during happy hour! $ 5 Ramen (House/​Spicy House/​Vegetable) and $ 5 Sushi Rolls. The happy hour is from 2:30 — 5:30 Mon.-Sat. And it’s a great place to eat after school, work, etc.

This is my favorite japanese spot in sac. They have a very good JH menu with cheap draft beers and a good selection of rolls. $ 5 ramen too for happy hour, it’s the house ramen and it’s really good. Broth is very important and they make a good one. Pork in it is really good and I’ve ordered the pork alone before as an appetizer. Making reservations is smart during busy hours as this place doesn’t hold a lot of people and you don’t want to be caught standing just staring at people eating wishing it was you.
Suminomo cucumbers are good too, sweet but not too sour, I usually get the house salad as they put a good amount of Suminomo on top. Salmon Kama is good and tasty, chicken yakisoba is also good. Also can’t go wrong with ordering the bento combo boxes.

Went here and waited a few minutes in order to take advantage of their Happy Hour Specials. :)
They have $ 5 sushi rolls. yum!

Our second time here for happy hour. And as others have noted, as long as you are in the doors by 5:30, they will honor the happy hour prices for you. That’s a nice touch because both times I have been here, the waiting area was packed.
We pretty much ordered the same happy hour specials as last time. We got the House Ramen, the Spider Roll, the Pepperfin, and the Pocket Roll. The rolls were very generous and a great value for $ 5. As noted in my last review, the pepperfin was OK, but again it was only $ 5! I liked the House Ramen more this time, with the rich broth, egg, generous meat and noodles. Draft Beers were Asahi and Sapporo and they were $ 2.50. So basically, for $ 25 we were stuffed, and actually got a small to-​go box for the rolls.
Ambiance is very casual, simple tables and a staff quickly moving to accommodate the full house at happy hour. Service is slightly rushed, but to be expected, as the lobby had a waiting list the entire time we were there.
All in all, a great value for happy hour, and we still look forward to trying this place for regular dinner soon.

Very very very poor service. Ended up leaving before being seated. With only two groups in front of us it took approximately 20 minutes for the first party to be seated. Most of the tables that contained patrons did not receive any of their meals. Restaurant only had two young waiters to serve a restaurant which looked like it contained 25 parties. Decided to leave because of the additional comments left on Unilocal mentioning the poor service and also slow response speeds.

Service has deteriorated over the past year. Order take-​out if you want to avoid waiting for food, order mix ups, etc. This is unfortunate because The food here is pretty good. Hopefully management gets their act together.

My husband and I finally decided to try this place out. He’s of Japanese descent so he was drawn to it immediately. We were promptly seated and drink orders taken. I am really hoping the gentleman that was our server was new because he was not very attentive. We sat at the table for about 5 – 10 minutes with menus closed before we finally flagged someone down to take our order. He was a little difficult to get ahold of when we were ready for our check, as well. His slow service was not a deal breaker since we got our food so quickly, it was delicious, and the portion sizes were generous for the price.
My husband got the Korean BBQ Short Ribs entrée and I got a dinner bento box with Sesame Chicken and Saba Shioyaki. As I said, the portions were very generous. His entrée came with rice, steamed broccoli, and miso soup. My bento box came with 2 pieces of CA roll, salad, soup, and rice. I had enough food to take home!
The menu had a nice variety of food options… You could order Udon, Ramen, Sushi Rolls, Bento Boxes, and Nigiri.
I know we will definitely be coming back some day to try some more goodies!

Yesterday on 11/​30/​2015, I decided to come to this small place located at Freeport Blvd. It’s called, «The Izakaya.» This local Japanese restaurant delivers some good Japanese cuisines from Ramen noodle soup to bento boxes. As I entered, the atmosphere is very comforting and quiet as I welcomed. The concept is very Japanese made filled with some wooden materials especially the sake bar on the right side of the room which it’s nicely decorated in here.
The employees are doing an alright job for making the customers like me a great atmosphere. In some cases however, the service is kinda awkward here despite I used the «Requested» app for the first time. I hope it needs to retrain the service properly in the future including using the «Requested» app too. Overall, it’s a good, fair service.
Now onto the food entrée! As I set up a «Requested» reservation for one person which it’s me last night, I ordered a bento box meal. In this order, I need to choose two selections right from their menu. I chose the chicken teriyaki & California roll as my choice. Additionally, the bento box also includes one slice of orange, a slice of fresh tomato, a fresh salad in thousand island dressing, and a Miso soup. As I ate it, the bento box plate is not that bad although there’s some flaws on it. The good: the slice of tomato and orange, Miso soup and the California roll are very tasty & delicious. The cons, the chicken teriyaki tasted alright although it’s too salty for me because of the sauce. I’m sure it needs to reduce the sodium of the sauce in the future. The salad is also not that bad too although the dressing can be an issue to me because of the sodium content as I mentioned earlier for the sauce of teriyaki. Overall, a good, average meal for me.
I haven’t got a chance to try their happy hour specials in Izakaya, so I’ll might be back in the next visits soon.
There’s plenty of parking available, so you can park anywhere you want.
All in all, The Izakaya is a fine, average Japanese restaurant right in the Land Park neighborhood where you can enjoy their tasty foods of Japan. Perfect for hanging out, and having happy hour pleasures in the afternoon. A well, worthy visit. My rating: 3 ½ stars.

This place used to be a Chinese restaurant I think. Anyways we found a coupon in the local mailer and decided to stop in for lunch. It was pretty busy on a weekend for lunch. I think most of the tables were taken. But there were only 2 waitresses working the whole place. And thus service was extremely slow. Food came out fairly quickly though. It was just the process of getting menus, ordering, getting drinks and paying. Ugh. For food, I tried the house ramen. Good broth and noodles were cooked right. And it included two pieces of pork, fish cake, half an egg, corn, onion, seaweed and mushrooms. I liked it. I mean I had better but this was decent ramen. My brother tried the spicy house ramen. It had a kick but wasn’t overwhelming spicy, according to him. Seemed like HH is the time to go though. Their deals seem great. Though I hope their service does improve.

My husband, my uncle and I came to this place a couple weeks ago because we were craving ramen but we didn’t want to drive all the way to downtown Sacramento. When we walked in, the place quite busy. We were standing and waiting to be seated by the door for over 15 minutes. Not a single person came by to greet or ask us how many people was our group, not even the owner who was sitting at the bar! I had to walk up to one of the waiters at the bar asking if we should seat ourselves or what. Then, she asked another waiter to seat our party at the table.
Zero first impression for all of us. We thought to ourselves that maybe the food was good here. The waitress finally came to our table and took our order without greeting or giving us any proper manner. Me and my uncle ordered the spicy house ramen and my husband ordered the regular house ramen. We also got the chicken katsu. Food came out pretty slowly. I got it thought because it was Friday night. The spicy ramen was ok. The regular one was bland, not good at all, but the chicken katsu was delicious!
By the time we were having our food, no one came by to check on our table or refilled our drinks. Not at all!
My husband and I gave this place another shot yesterday for our early dinner. I gotta say that they have a good deal on their happy hour.
The place wasn’t as busy as the first time, so we got seated pretty quickly. We ordered the spicy house ramen and the pocket rolls. The ramen was better this time and the rolls were amazing! We were really impressed with their rolls. However, the service was HORRIBLE! The waitress was rude and careless. She basically threw the plates on the table and just walked away.
I’m giving this place two stars just because their rolls are yummy. I gotta admit that some of their items are great but if the owner had paid more attention to the customer service, this place would have been more popular. They should train their staff on how to do their jobs properly and smile more, maybe?

Talk about horrible service. I came here for happy hour Friday night knowing that it will likely be crowded and there will be a wait, okay fine I will wait. Once my friend and I were seated someone came by and took our order. I ordered the IZ roll and the spicy ramen then I waited. I waited for more than 30 minutes wondering where my food was and then I finally asked the waitress because I noticed everyone who came in after me got their food before me. Since my friend was facing the kitchen she said the waitress who took our order went back to the machine and placed the order in and then moved our ticket to the front of the line. WTF? she forgot our order?! She came back and the only response she told us was that the food is on it’s way. She could have at least apologized for the wait or checked up and see how we were doing. It took me almost 1 hour before I got my spicy ramen. Luckily the IZ roll came before that but I felt like that skimp on the sauce this time around. The spicy ramen wasn’t even spicy at all, i just saw hot chili oil in the broth. It was kind of weird that they put jalapenos in the ramen and the jalapenos weren’t even spicy either.
Overall, even though my ramen was $ 5 during happy hour and my IZ roll was also $ 5. The service here was awful that I will not be back. I’d rather drive a little further for better sushi, ramen and service.

Love this place. Especially during happy hour. I love ordering a ramen bowl and ordering a few sushi dishes on the side to share with the table. Both really good and super filling.
It gets pretty busy and there isn’t enough staff so the girls have to hustle.

Good ramen at a good price. If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of downtown, this is a good alternative. Apparently happy hour has $ 5 ramen too, can’t beat that.

This was a big disappointment. I am in town to visit family and was hoping for some awesome Japanese cuisine. I was under the impression that this was the area to go to in Sacramento as it has a very heavy Asian influence.
We finally decided on this place as it had a cool vibe inside. The menu was standard as most Japanese restaurants are. Ramen, tempura, teriyaki, sushi, bento boxes, etc… I decided upon the fried chicken wings, a sushi roll and the chicken ramen. The rest of my party got the beef ramen, the sesame chicken and a steak teriyaki dinner. They all described their own dishes as sub par but for this review I will describe only my own.
The sushi was actually decent using fresh shrimp and real crab which is uncommon for a role, and tasted quite nice. However the chicken wings were pretty much unedible as in were undercooked and very chewy. The ramen was uninspired and lacking in flavor. The broth was decent but the chicken was just gross and the vegies were quite scarce.
The service was also lacking. I think we had about 6 different people helping us at any given time which would have been nice but someone always seemed absent when we needed them. It took about 15 minutes before anyone even greeted us at the table and asked us if we wanted something to drink.
I am extremely disappointed and am surprised that this wasn’t addressed at the restaurant itself. I mean when someone finally did ask us if we wanted our check they should have noticed that half the stuff we ordered was barely touched or not touched at all. I was still happy to pay for the food ordered as I am not the kind of person to expect free food, but you would think the waitresses and waiters would want to know why we didn’t eat anything.
Thanks for reading my review, hope this helps future customers! Just to clear things up if you think I am someone that just doesn’t know or have Japanese food often. I go to a Japanese restaurant at least once or twice a week back where I live in the midwest. Peace!

Never again.
We have visited this place many, many times. Never have we had such a terrible experience until tonight. My plate was delivered. 20 minutes later the next plate, 10 minutes later the next plate. Couldn’t get an answer from the waiter. Asked for the manager. Instead of an apology, we heard one excuse after the other. He could of handled this in so many ways. The way he treated my elderly mother was unacceptable,
A simple apology would have been a nice start. He stated that he had many complaints that night. Wow.
We will not return.

Great sushi place in Sac! Decent price range and the fish is pretty fresh. The tea was a tad bitter but overall a good experience.

Come here during their happy hour from 2:30 to 5:00pm for $ 5 ramen or sushi rolls :) I came here a few times for their sushi rolls and it’s okay. I like their IZ roll and Pocket roll :) However, the size of their sushi rolls is sooo inconsistent –_​_​_​– I mean it’s good, but sometimes I feel like I’m eating more rice and less of whatever is inside my roll, and sometimes the rolls are just super small. But their ramen is okay for $ 5 — I tried their spicy ramen. This place can get super busy during happy hour, so make sure to come early for their happy hour so you don’t have to wait! Not my favorite place, but I just eat here cause of happy hour :)

My coworkers and I came in during lunch. The rolls here didn’t really appeal to me, so I had the bento ($ 7.95). The two items I chose were the mix tempura and salmon sashimi (+$ 1). The tempura was light and crispy. The salmon was fresh. The meal also came with miso soup, salad, rice, and 2 CA rolls. One of my coworkers gave me his CA rolls– score! Service was quick and the food was good. Next time, I’ll have to try the ramen.

Been a while since I’ve been here. Knocked off 2 stars for our experience tonight. My spicy house ramen order came out wrong… They gave me the original no spicy instead, so I dumped the chili sauce in myself. My boyfriend had to sit here, starving, watching me eat while waiting for his bento box. After I FINISHED my ramen, his bento box came out and now it’s my turn watching him eat.
The servers never came by to update us, and 10 minutes before his food actually came out, a server just walked by and said «you’re bento will come soon». When they delivered the food, we did question what took so long and the server just said sorry and that their kitchen was backed up from togo orders. I’ve worked in the restaurant industry before and when the kitchen is backed up, I update my customers consistently and apologize. I also know that dining in customers gets the priority in service BECAUSE they are actually HERE in the moment.
Not sure if I will come back. This time, my appetite had absolutely been killed by the guilt of eating in front of my hungry boyfriend, and then spending extra time here while I watch him eat in return.

My friend is a regular here and she invited the ladies to try it out for Happy Hour. Other people say on other reviews that it’s old and musty. But for me it has it’s character. Walking in with my friend, the regular, the waitresses seems to know her name. (It’s like that Cheers theme song: Where everybody knows your name.) They acted like old friends but she is actually just a regular.
The environment is old looking but I think it gives it character. Now the taste test… I enjoyed what I ordered. I ordered the Spicy Ramen and IZ Roll. The Ramen is $ 5.00 and the Sushi Rolls $ 5.00. The beer was $ 2.50. Pretty good huh? Happy Hour starts at 2:30pm.
The waitress was extremely nice and accommodating. The food was delicious. It was a good day to go in. I had a great experience.