Kishi Japanese Restaurant - Upland

The coupon book came in the mail on Valentine's Day, but almost every coupon said not valid for Valentine's Day. Hmph! You'd think they'd want customers regardless of which day of the week. My brother said the restaurants figure they'd get your business anyway on V-Day, so they might as well try and lure you in the rest of the week.

So weeks later, on a Sunday night when I didn't feel like cooking, the thought of 2 Japanese dinner combos for $20, still seemed like a good deal. There was a small crowd waiting at the entrance, but they were all waiting for the teppanyaki. We didn't see any fancy knife tricks as we walked by, but did see some flames spark up. The sushi bar was sparse, and only a few tables in the dining area were occupied.

Nice menu huh? Each menu had a different samurai.

We ordered two dinner combos for three people. Each of us got a nice cup of hot green tea.

Salad was was a bit heavy on the ginger dressing.

And we got three bowls of miso soup chock full of seaweed and tofu.

One of our orders was the tempura and sukiyaki combo. Without the coupon, this combo was $12.95? if memory serves me correctly. The tempura dipping sauce was still steaming hot. The tempura batter was light and crisp with a nice mix of shrimp, green bean, potato, and eggplant tempuras.

Big container of rice. I've never seen this at a Japanese restaurant before. They usually serve small individual bowls.

The sukiyaki was piping hot. I took a photo with the flash so you can see the steam rising out of it. There were beef slices, tofu, onions, and translucent rice noodles. Unfortunately, the broth was super sweet. Like sugary sweet.

Here's the further away shot so you can see the sukiyaki with the metal bowl and wooden holder.

Our second combo was the abovementioned sukiyaki with 9 pieces of sashimi - whitefish?, tuna, and salmon. The sashimi was tender and fresh. Very good. Without coupon, sashimi and sukiyaki combo was $12.95?

We also ordered a spider roll. I think it was $8.50?

Even in the close-up, it's hard to see the softshell crab. The roll came out warm because the softshell crab was freshly fried. It tasted yummy, but I would have liked some more crab.

Our meal ended with Chinese fortune cookies. Wait! That's not Japanese. Au contraire, one of the origins of the fortune cookie was that it was invented by Makoto Hagiwara of Golden Gate Park's Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco in 1909.

Service was excellent. The food (with the exception of the too-sweet sukiyaki), was good - solid Americanized Japanese food.

And now I can't get the lyrics to "Sukiyaki" out of my head! C'mon 80's flashback, you know what I'm talking about!

"It's all because of you,

I'm feeling sad and blue

You went away,

Now my life is just a rainy day and I love you so,

How much you'll never know

You've gone away and left me lonely..."

Kishi Japanese Restaurant

320 W. Foothill Blvd.

Upland, CA 91786

909-981-1770