Izakaya is right inside door B of the mall on the front side along Fairfield Rd. You can see it's sign and black wall from the lot.
It's an anime themed place, and I have to say, it's cool looking, but it feels rather plain considering resturaunts like this in Japan I've seen online. It's just some anime neon and anime on some tvs. The food is "Korean" themed, but the name and theme are Japanese?
My BFF's daughter is big into anime and was crashing over night, so I thought it'd be fun to try the new place. I ended up visiting two days in a row, the second time with another friend and her niece. Service was good and consistant, but much more chatty and friendly second day.
I am the not slightest into anime at all, but it certainly didn't seem all that themed, I expected murals and in tons of kitch art and figures etc. But no I think it's rather light. They are missing a big opportunity, there's a empty 6 foot wall near the patio exit, it's just screaming too be a feature selfie wall. Paint an anime mural, the logo, maybe one of those lifesize anime statues from Japan to pose with... Boom free advertising. The theme overall just seems to be a half attempt, weak tea. If you look up these anime theme places in Japan, they are filled to the brim with decor. This is like 5 tvs and six neon signs. The decor is nice, but if you took the neon anime signs out, and put sing roar on tv you'd just think it was a nice bar.
Okay, enough of that: THE FOOD
The menu is limited. A small a half dozen each of appetizers, personal size pizzas and Korean corn dogs - each with a build your own option. And alcoholic drinks. It's really more of a bar with food, honestly. Service was good, food came out relatively fast.
Day 1: We got two diff corndogs each, and split the beef bulgoggi pizza just to try it. Corndogs were why I went and honestly were the stars of the show.
The pizza seemed like they didn't drain the bulgoggi enough, the crust looked to be hand stretched and made in house, but the top was kinda on wet side. (Not using a low moisture cheese can do that too), in the end it was merely okay, I'm not prolly going to order it again.
The corndogs, if you haven't had one, are the size of a baby's leg and mostly cheese with the bottom interior sometimes being a beef dog/sausage, some are all cheese inside. Outside is breaded in panko, ramen, cubed potato etc. They are CRONCHY!
We both got a ramen one, it was filled with cheese and beef dog/sausage. It was my fave. The potato one was cheese only and was heavy but had no dog to support the stick so it was kinda a two hand deal. you had to use two hands. but man was it crunchy. It was suppose d to come with a sweet soy sauce but they were out, so I asked for the sweet chili instead, it worked really nice on it. The signature Corndog, the Izakaya, had fried onions it was really good as well.
All in all, I'm not sure was worth $46 for two, before tip.
Day 2: I ordered the Ramen and Izakaya corn dogs, my friend ordered a make your own corndog and combined the ramen and the potato with cheese only, brilliant, and the teenager ordered... Pepperoni pizza. Kids. Sigh. Anyway, the pizza had cup pepperoni, very small. But cup. IYKYK. (It didn't look soggy like the day 1 pizza though.) But the star of THIS day was the Crab Rangoon dip. Dear God that could be a nice meal on its own. Topped with sweet chili sauce, and came with crunchy fried wonton wrapper chips. Now I want to make this for my next function.
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Notice for those with kids: I'm feminist but honestly hard to offend but the anime being played was ... rather adult, enough for me to notice (Skeleton demons squeezing hugeeee bouncing boobs) and a lot of anime I find kinda skews very sexist and adult/smutty) just something to keep in mind if your kids want to go. (Anime is not intended for kids if you didn't know.) read more