Nippon Ichi: Authentic Japanese Restaurant!

We’re proud to bring you the details on Bacolod’s newest and the most authentic Japanese restaurant ever – Nippon Ichi!

 

Nippon Ichi is a Japanese restaurant located at the 2nd Floor, Villa Angela Hi Strip – 4 Bldg on the  Circumferential Road.  The restaurant is HUGE and it is extremely beautiful inside.  The ambiance is great! Absolutely enchanting! Fans of Japanese culture will feel at home in this place.

Everything is well lighted and the restaurant can comfortably seat about 100-150 people.  The owner was there and she happily chatted with us – of course we didn’t tell her who we were!  She kept going on and on about their fully automated toilet bowl – the high tech ones that you see in Japan with a bidet, drier and all those high tech gadgets.  It was very funny to hear her go on and on like the toilet was the greatest thing ever! Way too much info!

Anyway, we took a look at their menu and we found out that their menu changes.  They have a separate menu for lunch and for the evening.  We were there at lunchtime and the choices for lunch didn’t particularly interest us – we didn’t want tempura or sushi for lunch so we settled for the pork tonkatsu set which costs about 280.  We initially thought at first that it was quite pricey but then our order arrived and it brought a smile to our faces!  The meal was worth every penny!

Visually the set itself is pleasing to the eye.  It is arranged quite pleasingly and the colors of the food are bright and cheerful.  We were happy to note that the wasabi sauce -seen beside the kalamansi is of a higher quality grade than the ones served in local Japanese restaurant.  It was pleasantly “anghang”.  Iban klase ang anghang sang wasabi sang nipon ichi kaysa iban na restaurant diri sa Bacolod. I can identify what brand they used.  Anyway, for 280php the meal also comes with Japanese rice.  Other restaurants would charge you separately for it!  As a test, my friend asked for Japanese Chili powder to put on the rice and they actually had it!

The pork was well cooked and fried to perfection.  the Side dishes were okay – is that a pork adobo side dish? lol.

The side dishes are just okay.  They’re nice to have.

Some pork stewed in soy sauce.

They have the most delicious Miso soup with real seaweed and bursting with shrimp flavor!

The most fascinating part of the meal was making your own tonkatsu sauce.  You had to grind the sesame seeds and then add sauce.  It was a beautiful and a fun experience!

 

A huge pot of sauce is placed in front of you and you can ladle out as much as you want to mix with the ground sesame.

At the end of our meal, we were given a tiny slice of adzuki bean jelly on a tiny plate with tiny cherry blossom prints.  It was so cute!

Service is top notch at this place with the waiter coming by several times to fill the glasses of water and cheerfully coming by for our requests of extra wasabi, sauce, etc.  The place is absolutely great and the food is good too.  The different menus for lunch and dinner are a bit confusing and inconvenient for customers.  We thought the pickings for lunch were a bit slim.  Fortunately we were very happy on how our tonkatsu meal turned out!

Give this restaurant a try!  It is one of the places I would bring my family out to visit.  It is both fun and relaxing!

Nippon Ichi is open 11am-2am Mondays to Sundays