Ichitei has been serving Japanese cuisine since 2009, but it’s only in 2024 that I finally decided to sample their food. The nice thing about this long standing institution is that all prices are net priced with no tax or service charge, so it already has a head-start on most other Japanese restaurants.⠀
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Ichitei’s main attraction are their sashimi dons, and I got a bowl of their best selling Hokkaido Scallop & Salmon Mentaiko Aburi ($17.50). Don’t let the deceptively diminutive size of this dish fool you; it can fill up most people with ease. Lots of salmon sashimi is laid on top of a mound of sushi rice, crowned by a couple of slices of Hokkaido scallop, and then the entire shebang gets dressed with mentaiko before it all gets lit with a blowtorch.⠀
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The plethora of fresh salmon sashimi was quite fresh, and the thinly sliced Hokkaido scallops were subtly sweet. However, the amount of mentaiko was slightly lacking, as it didn’t really make much of an impact on this dish. Ichitei did, however, thoroughly torch the mentaiko as well as the seafood, making this the smokiest aburi rice bowl in Singapore.⠀
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With all that said, Ichitei is a decent place for a no-frills Japanese fare fix, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to have the food here.