Ichidai Restaurant

Ok, this review is for my REAL sushi experience versus a conveyor belt sushi place. I would give it 4.5 stars, but the service tonight was exceptional since they gave my girlfriend a yummy ice dessert for her birthday. I have dined here countless times in the last seven years and have NEVER been disappointed. The fish (and everything else) is always fresh and top notch. My must-​haves are the squid salad with sea weed, baked mussels, and I always close with an avacado boat… which are amazing.
True, the location is in somewhat of an odd spot, but maybe that’s a good thing since there is rarely (only once) a wait and NEVER a hipster line. This place runs with the best in town, without having to fight with the rest of town for a seat.

I’ve been here a couple times and had a pretty good experience. Their prices are fair and their fish are of good quality. There are some sushi places that I would avoid order too much raw fish and stick to rolls with veggies and crab, but not this place. That all being said, this place isn’t particularly mind blowing, and the location isn’t impressive. (Though sometimes I wonder if that is a good thing.)

Best sushi in the city. We have been coming here for years and they only get better. We would recommend the spicy tuna roll.

Great sushi for the price! Generous portions! I got the grilled chicken bento box. It was delicious! The chicken was really juicy. I was surprised that a full California roll came with the bento as well as a good portion of tempura. Also came with seaweed salad, house salad, miso and a bowl or rice. All for $ 12 :) My husband got the pork cutlet Katsu. That was on point too! Don’t let the parking lot and office building fool you, there is a cute restaurant tucked inside.

Really good spot. The saba is excellent, and don’t forget to try the miso marinated cod. Will be back soon

This review is purely on the food. It’s effing delicious. We didn’t arrive on empty stomachs – we were actually pretty full from eating at touristy spots in Portland (we are from CA) but the food was STILL that good. We tried the udon, the bento box with chicken katsu and tempura, multiple rolls (wish I remembered the names), some unagi sushi, and salmon sashimi. The texture of the udon noodles and broth were on point; the tempura was the best I ever had (thin breading but crispy and flavorful); the salmon sashimi melts in your mouth; the chicken katsu … Delicious (breading was light and crispy as well); and the rolls… We ordered two plates of the same three rolls. I wish I could go to ichidai right now… But it’d be a 17 hour drive :(FOR SURE it will be our first place to dine the next time we are in Portland.

Ichidai is your standard Japanese restaurant. It’s a bit on the high side for the quality and quantity of the food.
The service is definitely hit or miss depending on the server you get. Sometimes you have to get up and hunt them down, which was the case tonight but it might be our fault for getting there 40 min before closing. The last time they seated us at the counter and never came back, the sushi chef had to call them over. Hopefully you get the older lady, she’s attentive and pretty funny.
The 555 roll is good and so is the broiled mackerel, everything else is decent but nothing really stands out.

If it weren’t for Unilocal,I would have never seen or discovered this place. It’s on a block with other businesses, I had to put their address on my gps to be able to find it. It’s on Powell and very easy to miss.
We were very hungry and the both of us had ordered the combination meals. We were able to choose three items. I chose the teriyaki beef, tempura and a salmon roll. I had been on a teriyaki kick the past few months, for some odd reason. It was tender and had amazing flavor.
The inside is kind of drab and uninteresting. It almost feels as if I am not inside of a restaurant. It’s a little strange. I had the salmon roll, and it simple and delicious. I think we spent $ 50 on dinner, which seemed like a lot. We did order quite a bit of food and had drinks as well. I’ll have to come back and try maybe just the sushi.
Great food & plenty of parking!

Pleasantly surprised! Walked into this restaurant a little skeptical at a friend’s recommendation. Walked out fat and happy. Good food!

Unilocal, please get with the program. This place is NOT open Tuesdays… Just went all the way there in the rain because you marked it as «open.»

One of my families favorite Japanese restaurant. Sushi is made Fresh and the staff is very welcoming. Great Japanese beers and a good wine selection.
Small window of hours so make sure you can get there while they are open. It is a place that is a little speedy but at the same time the quality of sushi is one of the best I’ve had so I’m willing to fork over a few extra dollars for quality sushi.

You can easily miss Ichidai. It’s a location that has the feel of a dentist office and it’s in a neighborhood that is un-​remarkable. It is however a nice balance between quality, atmosphere and cost. My wife and I have been here 3 times. If you sit at the «bar» and order order right, you will be happy. By ordering right, I mean, «find out whats good that day». Don’t sit at the bar and order a bunch of dynamite rolls. I’m not saying there isn’t a right time and place for that, but if that’s you are looking for that go to Mio sushi.
Most of the staff is Japanese, the service is very good. The Ichidai chef we had each time was very quite and business like. He didn’t talk at all, but I could see he was paying attention to what we ordered and when he served us, he gave us something let us know he was serious about his craft. The fish quality has been great everytime we’ve been here. In general everything is simple and basic, but well done.
On the atmosphere, the clientele is pretty much the dynamite and philadelphia roll type hence the comment I made earlier. You won’t really impress your «date» here because of this and the dental office feel of the location. If however you have a friend that likes good sushi and doesn’t care about this, this is a great place to go for dinner.

For a couple years was our favorite sushi place. Appears to be on the downward slide to mediocrity.
Service was unacceptably slow for the number of diners.
The size of the sashimi pieces has shrunk. (Seems to be the trend… after sushi places develop a clientale, they start cutting corners to regain profit).
No presentation on the platters we ordered.
Items ordered didn’t arrive.
When it was time to pay the bill, we tired of waiting and walked to the register.
A disappointment from start to finish.

Best sushi in that part of town! Always have fresh fish. The deluxe dinner comes with so much food for only $ 18 and it includes miso, cucumber salad, edemame, sashimi, rice, California roll, veggie and shrimp tempura, teriyaki beef, chicken karaage, and some fried egg thing that I can’t remember what it’s name was. Good sushi nothing really to complain about. Except when we ordered the spicy California roll it’s not really that spicy.

This cute little sushi place right of the main street of 57^th and Powell. Their parking lot is super small and you’ll probably never find a spot that’s right outside of the restaurant so park on either side of the building which has a much bigger lot.
Walking inside and you’ll see a sushi bar with a with tables in the middle and booths on the side of the wall. With a few waitress that don’t seem to enjoy working there for days on end. The sushi chefs are actually pretty friend when they aren’t super busy and trying to cram out orders. However even they are so busy the service is always super slow! I swear I was about to grow wrinkles and everything by the time the food came, it took about 45 minutes just for 2 rolls and a bento box. This isn’t the first time either, service has always been slow here it seems for me. The sushi wasn’t anything that special either for the price that you’ll be paying for here sadly. The presentation is quite good however that doesn’t cover up the quality/​taste. I would much rather have gone else where if I wasn’t craving sushi super badly.
I would’ve loved to rate this place a little higher if the service was much faster, the waitress were pretty nice because the kitchen was taking forever but hey maybe the next time I come in the service won’t be so bad.

Super customer service, that is both friendly and helpful. The food was great but we never did get our spoon to have our miso soup. So we just slurped it up, because i was starving. 32.00 for two people that included 7 rolls, two soups, drinks for two and a small salad. Very affordable and I’ll be back– SVJ

This review is long overdue. And I’ll preface it by saying that I’ve been following this restaurant since it was a hole in Sellwood. For me, it was good then and it’s good now. Don’t be put off by Ichidai’s somewhat unorthodox location. One of the best restaurants I’ve eaten in was in the basement of a bank in Tokyo.
A while back, four of us dined at Ichidai. I don’t recall their meals, I was there for sukiyaki. What I recall from the evening is that I walked away from the restaurant feeling like I’d gotten the meal I wanted. I can still recall the taste of the broth, the seasoning in the beef, and the way the shirataki noodles absorbed the well-​seasoned flavors and passed them on to me.
Yeah, I like Ichidai. I’d go back any day of the week.

Wonderful food great service! I can’t believe I haven’t found this place before. Fish was fresh nice portions and nice presentation.

I’ve gone to this restaurant more than a handful of times but never found the food exceptional or poor to write a review. However, the last two times have been disappointing and I’m not sure what has changed.
Last time, dinner was good. I remember really liking the Tuna poke, and our rolls were good. I never get mochi for dessert at restaurants because it is such a ripoff (you can get a whole pack at the grocery store for the cost of 2 mochi), but I was craving something sweet so I ordered the strawberry mochi.
This is obviously store bought and stored in the freezer. It looked a little dry and slightly odd. They provided little forks to pick up the mochi with. The mochi cracked and crumbled when I poked at it. I tried taking a little bite, and it was completely dried and crumbly. Freezer burn! Disgusting! I called the server over and told her the mochis were bad… she looked surprised and apologized. Asked if I wanted a different flavor, so I asked for the coffee. She came back minutes later saying all the mochis were bad. You can tell they were bad when you pick it up, and for her to bring it out… yuck.
The last visit was tonight and it wasn’t good. Probably the worst sushi rolls I have had in a long time. The sushi rice was way too soft and mushy. It was mushed inside the rolls and falling off the sides of the rolls.
The poke was extremely questionable. I eat TONS of tuna and love poke (will probably die from mercury positioning someday) but something was wrong with the dish. The fish did not smell bad, but considering the after taste– something wasn’t right. It was overly tender to the point that the texture did not feel normal. Extremely slimy but stuck to your teeth and tongue. Almost like overly tenderized meat… creepy.
The other dishes were good, but the weird poke really ruined it for us. The sashimi tuna was completely different than the poke tuna and was a lot fresher. The texture was way different.
Two stars is all I can give tonight… and not sure if I will ever go back. We’ll see how I feel in 8 hrs. :-x

Not my favorite sushi place. Not at all.
The service was shoddy, the fish in my philadelphia roll was no good. I’ve never spit out sushi before. I did here.
The 5−5−5 roll and the spicy yellowtail were the only decent rolls.
«You get what you pay for» comes to mind after eating here.
Lots of good reviews and I’m not sure if I just had bad odds that night, or something else was going on.