East Izakaya is located at 6661 Lundy's Lane in Niagara
Falls. It's a more upscale place with a nice modern interior, iPad menus and
very nice lunch selection. It's one of the first places we encountered to
be checking proof of vaccination. Surprisingly disposable chopsticks are used,
but we brought our own as always. East Izakaya has serving robots like Robo
Sushi. Soy at table was fresh, slightly sweet and delicious. AYCD pop is $2. Green
tea is included and was quite good, not too watery.
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Mishy said that the seaweed salad was delicious. She was not
impressed with the miso soup although it clouded properly, and I tend to agree
that it was short on dashi; I have her well-trained as she found that adding
soy sauce restores some of the missing umami. Shrimp tempura was very light and
flaky and not too oily, however the sauce was a bit too sweet. Green salad had
an interesting and very original dressing with an interesting aroma, and was
delicious. It's clearly made on premises and I very much liked it. Wonton soup
was among the best I have had as well, with a complex and savory broth, perfect
balance of flavors with wakame and enoki mushrooms.
Chicken and beef teriyaki were both among the best of each
that we have ever had, perfectly cooked, and the sauce was fantastic and savory
with smokiness. (Yes, we definitely had seconds.) Salmon and red snapper nigiri
were very fresh and very good, surf clam nigiri was among the best I have had
as was super fresh.
Negi beef was clearly made with AAA beef and was excellent.
Cheese steak had southwestern seasoning and was amazing. Barbecued chicken was
flavored with five spice Asian style and was delicious. All of the skewer items
were large thick chunks of high-quality meat, which makes it worth it. Chili
chicken was quite good and happily not overly hot as the Chili's were roasted.
Mishy loved the sweet and sour chicken which I also agree was very good with
plenty of pineapple. Sake pan fried mushrooms were extraordinarily savory and
delicious. Sunomono salad, a traditional Japanese dish of Julienned cucumber in
rice wine vinegar, was very good.
For desserts there are only ice creams and fresh fruit, but
the ice creams are good enough that nothing else is required. Coconut ice cream
has this fantastic unidentifiable flavor along with the along with pieces of
actual coconut in it. As I would have expected, the red bean had that amazing and
also unidentifiable fruit-like flavor that only the best restaurants’ red bean
ice creams have. Mango ice cream was delicious with excellent flavor. Strawberry
ice cream was delicious, and also excellent. All of the ice creams were very fresh
and none had any trace of freezer burn. Service was very good. Lunch was $29.99, and I
never imagined I’d ever be paying $30 for lunch without issue, but between the pandemic,
the quality of the offerings at East Izakaya, and the area, it’s not too
unreasonable though there will be a slight loss. The meats were so ample and of such quality that it was as if we were at a grillhouse, or even a rodizio. We had a memorably good lunch with
minor shortcomings and even at this price would return.
Rating: 8.5/10
