Inshou Japanese Cuisine

Inshou is a small little place in the neighborhood. The style is casual with dim lighting and more of tapas/​izakaya format as there is plenty to over variety and lots of small dishes to share.
We ordered:
— The garlic steak: very good and was on of the better dishes. Did not taste like an Asian dish a and came served on top of a hash brown. Was good nonetheless.
— White tuna tataki: this came out looking good but after biting into it, we realized there were ice crystals in it and completely ruined the dish. We left the fish aside to defrost for a while but it was still icy cold til the end so we had to return it. That is just a huge no no for me.
— orange blossom roll: lots of rice and thin cut of salmon. Overall tasted quite bland as there was nothing unique about it.
— Sashimi salad: solid dish and very happy with
— Hamachi nigiri: fish was fresh but came with a bit too much rice.
Overall if I were to come back, I’d prob stay away from their sushi/​sashimi options and focus more on the cooked smaller dishes. Service was ok but I do wish they gave people who order tea their own tea pot. Waving down someone to get a refill was a must and we ended up having to wait 5 min from empty cup to full cup every time. It shouldn’t be that way.

If I could give this place zero stars, I would. How could a place like this even get four stars? ⁵⁄₆ people in our party needed a refill on their waters. Only after we had to ask repeatedly did they refill it. The girl who did it wasn’t even our waiter. I ordered THE Garlic Steak. It wasn’t anything outstanding. Portions are small. Doesn’t come with any rice or miso soup.
***WARNING!!!*** all the dinner items are a la carte

I don’t write many reviews but when I do, it’s because I feel so strongly about it!!! I work in foster city and the only thing that gets me to commute down from SF to foster city is the thought that maybe I’ll get to go to inshou and have a delicious f*@$&ing garlic steak on a sizzling bed of genius-​Michelin-​Oscar award winning hash brown and onions. Or their amazing take on onigiri by frying it and placing spicy cod roe on top. Or their amazing sashimi salad. The list can go on forever.
I’ve been coming to inshou for about 3 years now, their service is amazing (SO to Gabriel, Hayato, Jadey and delicious garlic steak chef man). Inshou feels like a second home. And you would be in for such a treat the minute you step in.
I LOVE YOU INSHOU. SO SO MUCH.

Worst experience ever.
The waitress served wrong food without confirming with us, and we are required to pay for double the price of what we original ordered, and they reject to apologize and insist us pay for their fault. At last the waitress using some very impolite words like“go away go away”.
I have never experience such disgusting service and attitude before.

love gyu don! Very traditional Japanese style. Lots of beef and Red ginger. Seems only serving on lunch time. $ 11.47 (tax included)

I’ve been looking for a Japanese restaurant specializing rice bowls for quite some time. And the one closest to home I’ve found is actually quite far away, like a 35 minute drive from San Mateo. So really Inshou has not only made my dreams come true, but also saved my many hours of driving.
This place packs serious flavor, and while most of the reviews rave about the garlic steak I’d like to put in a word for the pork bowl with poached egg. It’s amazing! I think I had some drastic change in facial expression after taking my first bite. It’s important to take note though that since it is a RICE bowl it’s not huge amounts of protein in each dish, but I came out fairly satisfied. Next time I will be venturing into sashimi and sushi territory. To be continued.

I had the worst unagi-​don for lunch here, which has turned me away from Inshou entirely. It was truly a terrible experience.
Unagi don for lunch was $ 14.50.
Unagi itself wasn’t crispy/​soft, it was slimy and flaccid.
Unagi was CUT UP into 1-​inch by 1-​inch pieces, which is so non-​traditional and unnecessary.
Unagi was slathered in a goop so unnaturally sweet yet salty, I don’t even know.
Very little unagi was provided, such that half the bowl was strewn with tsukemono (pickles) in a haphazard fashion. The rest of the room was filled deep with rice.
The rice was broken, weirdly textured and additionally ruined by said goop.
In summary, not only did the unagi don taste horrendous, presentation made me lose my appetite. I took 3 bites, then left it aside. The server asked if I wanted to pack the rest up, and I said «No.»
I would not recommend Inshou to those seeking izakaya (japanese tapas) foods. Please go to Yakitori Kokko, Izakaya Ginji, or even Izakaya Mai all local to San Mateo. Seriously.

We came around 11:45am and beat the lunch rush! We were seated right away and ordered our food. The place is modern, clean, and a perfect place to have a company lunch. I ordered the Aburi Chashu Don, a rice bowl with broiled pork and a soft boiled egg. The pork was amazing, but I didn’t like the raw red onions in the dish. Next time, I will ask them to cook the onions! We ordered the tea brulee for dessert. The crème was tasty, but the brulee was sadly burned. We just ate around it! Service was only okay, it seemed like they were seriously understaffed during lunch. I’d come back to give their other menu items a try!

A great atmosphere for many occasions. A very versatile place where you can grab a few drinks and eat some pretty good food. A really clean place with very friendly servers although they can get busy during dinner time and sometimes take a while to get to you. I’d call ahead if you can so that you don’t have to wait as long during their dinner rush.
FOOD:
The garlic steak is really good. Tender, juicy, and full of flavor and cooked to perfection. A bit on the smaller side, but well worth your while.
The yakionigiri with roe is amazing as well. Grilled perfectly with oil to get as good of a crunch on rice as possible and somehow really flavorful served with a perfectly crisp slab of seaweed to wrap the rice in. Also very much worth your while.
MAGURO KAMA — The tuna collar is huge and amazing. If you don’t mind a bit of a splurge, definitely get this. So good (some days they just don’t have it).
Other things like the seaweed salad and ankimo are very solid. The food here is all generally pretty good, but these are my highlights.
Definitely a place I’d recommend for general Japanese cuisine.

Came in for dinner with some friends and it was a very pleasant experience overall. They are typically busy, so I would recommend making a reservation ahead of time. However, sometimes you are better off walking in because they do not let you make a last minute reservation.
The food here is always good. The only shortcoming would be the service. We needed to catch the attention of our waiter a few times. Also, I was constantly out of water/​tea. My friend who used to be a waiter told me that good service means that the customer always has water. He says that a good waiter will treat it as if there is a fish living in the cup, and he/​she must keep refilling water so the fish doesn’t die. Well, my fish kept dying at Inshou. I’m not trying to be over critical and make a big deal out of water refills, but good service is all about attention to details. Right?
Highlights-​chicken yakitori, garlic steak, ochazuke, TEA BRÛLÉE

I came here tonight with my boyfriend since we were craving Japanese food. On a Saturday night, we waited about 15 minutes for a table for two which wasn’t too bad at all. We ordered Garlic Steak, Sashimi Salad, Taki Karage, and Kani Cream Croquette. Our first three dishes came out pretty quickly at the same time in about 10 minutes that we ordered. As we were close to finishing these three dishes, our Croquette still didn’t come out yet. We asked a waitress if it was still coming and she came back asking who took our order. We told her who took our order and she came back a few minutes later saying that they actually ran out and asked if we wanted to order something else. She recommended that we get the fried oysters and so we did. We waited for a long time and it still didn’t come out so we asked for the check. The waiter told us that they didn’t charge us for the Croquette and the Oysters were on the house. To our confusion, we told him those never came either and he apologized but as soon as we were about to leave, he told us the oysters are just ready and we could get it packed up if we wanted. However, we just decided to eat it there.
Garlic steak (medium rare) — The number one special on their list. Tender and flavorful. Cooked with onions and stacked on top of a hash brown!
Sashimi Salad — The second dish on their special list. The fish and salad is very fresh.
Taki Karage (deep fried octopus) — Chewy and delicious with the squeeze of lemon juice
Fried Oysters — The oysters are big and comes with two different types of sauce.
Overall, the food was good, the portions are just about right and not overpriced. Just an advice to management that they should be more organized on the orders and notifying the customers if they ran out on a dish instead of having us wait for it. Although we weren’t notified that one of our dishes are actually sold out, they handled it well and recommended us something else we could try that was on the house.

I wish I got to try more items but I really liked what I tasted:
–Grilled uni: I’ve never had it like this! It doesn’t change the texture too much but adds a slight char taste.
–Seaweed ochazuke: Comfort food and filling
–THE garlic steak: You can specify how cooked you want the meat. It comes out over a hash brown so it’s a little greasy but super tasty.
–Dinner combo: Good but only order this if you need a filler. They have so many good small dishes that it’s better to try those.
Small place but good service.

5 star for just having my favorite sake!
Great japanese izakaya food. Lots of food to order with your beer or sake.
fried gizzard
beef tongue
yaki onigiri
grilled duck with daikon oroshi
They usually have some good quality fish in the special menu as well.
Not a place to go if you want sushi. Go to a sushi restaurant if that is what you are looking for.

This Japanese restaurant has a lot of dishes that you don’t see regularly in the states. I didn’t recognize like half of the dishes which is probably a good thing. There’s a lot of seafood available here.
I ate a hodgepodge of food here. I had the ikura salmon roe which was really fresh but quite expensive since a 2 piece was like $ 7 and it was one of the smallest ikura portions I’ve had.
The fried chicken skin was quite good although it looked a lot like pork rinds. This is definitely something to get for the table and not something you should eat by yourself. It’s quite fattening.
The agedashi eggplant wasn’t bad. I liked the sauce! The eggplant skin was a bit tough though.
The nabeyaki udon was pretty good. I liked the simplicity of the broth and the noodles were just what I liked. They were a bit slippery and chewy.
The garlic french fries were exactly that. I don’t know why they were here in a Japanese restaurant.
I would like to come back and try some other dishes!

My friend told me this is a good restaurant to try out, so we went for lunch.
We arriver at noon time and we got the second last table for two, so, go early especially if you dont want to wait. We ordered a chirashi and a garlic steak rice.
We will go back for dinner for sure.

Oh. My. God.
So I was a little skeptical based on the hit/​miss reviews, but um. Amongst the best Japanese food I’ve ever had. The interior is a little strange — kind of modern, kind of traditional, and they play house music (?!) but the clientele was mostly older people, so I don’t really know lol. But it’s okay. I wasn’t there for the ambiance — I was there for the food.
Okay first off — the salmon belly sashimi. Um. All the yes. So buttery and so amazeballs. Yes, I said amazeballs. The yaki onigiri (fried riceball) was also out of the world. So strange that that’s what blew me away, but being able to make something so simple so delicious? Omg. Says so much.
Other items we ordered — fried soft shell crab (the dipping sauce was so great), a few yakitori sticks (also good), and the uni /​toro donburi (really good, but the toro wasn’t super soft). Our bill came out to be about $ 80 which wasn’t too bad for the amount of food we got. Portions aren’t huge, but food is well paced, so you’re never hungry. We left feeling SO satisfied and so happy! Highly recommend.

My first encounter with Inshou was quite confounding. While I initially thought I had a great 5 stars experience, my appreciation started to fizzle after I slept over it. Hmm… could it be possible I was so starved that even lackluster food tasted stellar? Speaking about a change of impression re Inshou, the word ‘inshou” coincidentally means «impression» in both Chinese and Japanese! Maybe I was being fickle to change impression, but methinks not.
In retrospect, dishes were inconsistent. The Garlic Steak ($ 11.50) got us off to an impressive start, as this was easily the piece de resistance for the evening. The clincher was the bed of golden crispy hash brown the steak was nestled on. The hash brown was smothered with luscious caramelized yellow onions sautéed in a savory garlic butter sauce. The meat was cooked medium and although it was not any exceptional cut of beef (tasted like a sirloin or a NY), the sizzling teppan plate emitted an enticing aroma accentuated by the phenomenal lip smacking steak. (⁵⁄₅)
Then began the roller coaster ride. It was almost sinful that yakitori (grilled skewered meat) which constituted an integral part of izakaya failed so disappointingly. In the first place, yakitori choices were limited to the boring usual suspects. We randomly selected 4 and 8 skewers came (2 to an order). So if one skewer was subpar, we were stuck with the other! The worst was chicken skin ($ 4.00) that was mushy, fatty and redolent of chicken shit! The salted gizzard ($ 4.50) and heart ($ 4.50) lacked smokiness and a good charcoal flavor. The beef tongue ($ 7.00) was just ok and that too only after having sprinkled some shichimi (Japanese chili pepper). Skip! (¹⁄₅). After the dismal performance by the grillers, they redeemed themselves by grilling to perfection a fine piece of salmon kama (cheek) ($ 6.50). This was delicately done with just the right heat and flame so that the meat remained moist and flaky while the skin crispy. (³⁄₅)
Aji Nanban ($ 6.50) was briefly marinated in a sweet-​spicy-​vinegary sauce served cold with aji (mackerel) either pan-​fried or deep-​fried topped with julienned yellow onions. Being cold, it was surprisingly refreshing and a good accompaniment with beer. (³⁄₅)
Moving on to the sashimi section, we couldn’t pass up an order of conch sashimi ($ 9.00), the poor man’s abalone or geoduck clam! They all have in common a briny, ocean-​y flavor and a chewy bite. Conch was much cheaper though and it was certainly worth a try for after all, it is an edible marine snail. (⁴⁄₅) The next dish came with a mild kick. How about a serving of kanpachi with jalapenos ($ 10.00)? It might be Hawaiian and Asian fusion stuff but the sweet and sour ponzu sauce was really the bomb. Kanpachi or amberjack is a mild tasting fish and at this price, my guess the fish was farm raised from Hawaii instead of imported from Japan. (³⁄₅)
Leave the second best entrée for the last. Tai Meshi ($ 15.50) is seasoned rice cooked with grilled snapper and mustard green in a stone bowl and doused with secret dashi (soup stock) served from a teapot. The flavorful rice was hard to beat. Tai (snapper or sea bream) is one of my favorite fish and perhaps even one of the best-​loved fish in Japan. It is prized for its delicate, mild and sweet flavors (⁴⁄₅)
Inshou is a small place with a max capacity of 50. Like any restaurant, they have their hits and misses. The overall result was a total mixed bag. I would like to see more grilled fish offerings in their menu like in any izakaya and the yakitori section revamped. The vibe was boisterous and festive with an elegant décor. Our server, Jadey, although not Japanese, knew her food well and was helpful and cordial.
3.51 stars rounded to 4
Gochisosama deshita! (Thanks for the meal!)

I think this is my favorite izakaya style restaurant so far after I visited: Tanto, En, Gochi, Saizo, Sumiya, Sumika, Ironiya, Mokutanya, the list goes on and on. Why? (1) The food is not over priced (2) portion is generous (3) food is served spot on with their freshliness and not over cooked.
They have a regular menu, and a today special menu. I highly recommend checking out what they have on their special menu first. You don’t need to ask for it, they will bring you the board to your table.
Here are a few examples of my favorites:
— Garlic steak: Rib eye steak serve over hashbrown and onion with their garlic sauce serve over a sizzling hot plate. You can choose how well do you like your steak. They recommend medium, but personally I like medium rare.
— A box of torched uni: If you go to a supermarket to buy a box of uni
— Marguo kama: everyone knows hamachi kama, it’s not special anymore. Behold! the roast tuna cheek is easily 5 times as large as a hamachi karma, served with lemon, mixed green and a special sauce. Fully of flavor for fish lover
— They have many kind of sashimi but they sold out quickly, I tried these ones and I like all of them: Blue fin tuna, Tuna chu-​toro, hamachi belly, Gonch (shell fish).
— Yaki-​onigiri: very tasty grilled rice ball. It stays crispy for a long time.
I haven’t try their yakitori menu before, but the other grilled item I ordered was really good.
Or, just look at the pictures that other Unilocalers and I posted, I think they totally speak of themselves.

Inshou is tucked away in an odd plaza that has all sorts of cusines.
I came here with a friend who recommended it.
We made it just in time for the end of happy hour. The happy hour has a very limited menu, but 30% on most alcohols. We got a pitcher of sapporo, regular price is $ 15, then 15% off.
It’s a little weird because instead of having a happy hour menu at each table, they take one big whiteboard around to each table. They also have a separate blackboard for their specials, that they also take around the restaurant. Odd.
Other than that, we ordered off the regular menu. We came early to try to get our hands on the evasive Maguro Kama. We were able to secure one! We also ordered hamachi kama, and THE garlic steak.
They were super surprised that we ordered 2 kamas (collar) — we didn’t understand why.
THE Garlic steak came out first. Don’t confuse this with the fish steaks. There is one that says «THE Garlic Steak» on the menu with the capitalized «THE». This was well seasoned over a soggyish hasbrown and onions. This was very delicious, but just a little bit salty, so eat with rice!
Next the hamachi kama came out. This was well cooked, just a hint overcooked, but nonetheless probably the second best hamachi kama I’ve had. The meat was still super tender and had a nice crisp on the outside.
We were getting pretty full at this point, perhaps it was the beer. Then as we finished this, the Maguro kama came out… O… M… G… This thing is HUGE. This was served on a dish that was about 11inches x 11inches, and the kama didn’t really fit on the plate. See picture. There were 2 pieces. It was a bit salty, and there was so much meat on these pieces. It comes with raw onions which is very necessary to balance out the strong flavour of the tuna. We ended up asking for more of the onions, and more rice. I would also recommend more lemons.
Hamachi Kama — 8.50
Maguro Kama — 22
Pitcher of Sapporo — 15 (less 15%)
I don’t remember how much the garlic steak was.
All in all, this was a super inexpensive dinner that was extremely filling. I would recommend sharing the Maguro Kama between 3 – 4 people, and our whole meal should have probably been split between 3 – 5 people.
Highly Recommended, and will return!!!

If Nobu K. (check him out @
) considers this place a legit izakaya, then I gotta agree
(which is not to say I haven’t done my own homework on the place. I understand what it means to perform due diligence (kinda. .. I’ll wiki it later just to make sure though)).
I’ve been to Inshou more than a couple times now and each time it’s been fairly enjoyable.
The place is lively, the food is fun, and the beer is icy cold.
Yes, you should really try the garlic steak. It delivers on flavor and you might even appreciate the hidden hash brown underneath the steak.
The deep fried baby octopus (octopi? octopuses? octu-​ever) is also one of my favorites. Seriously, if you like calamari tentacles, you’re gonna like this dish.
Oh, and make sure to check out their daily specials. We once ordered this incredible tuna kamma off of it and it proved to house some of the tastiest morsels of fish I’ve ever had.
The only thing I do not enjoy
is the wait (but who does) so I dare not go without a reservation.
Otherwise, I usually end up waiting outside.
And it can get surprisingly cold in San Mateo.