ISHI is a true hidden gem, with no website and no sign on the outside of its building. Opened in 2021, the restaurant has a menu that gets hand-written on a white board each day, and it features straight-forward but seriously excellent Japanese dishes. Owner Chef Ken Ishibashi prepares all the food himself and often pops out of the kitchen to deliver bowls of fish to diners. There’s only a few seats in the place — a coveted eight chairs at the sushi bar and one table for four — which means it’s sometimes hard to dine in here, but the food is worth trying to snag a spot.
My husband and I love to go for lunch at ISHI, and last week, we went for lunch on Valentine’s Day. Our entrees came with miso soup included. The broth of ISHI’s miso soup tasted so good with rich umami flavor and soft, little cubes of potato.
I ordered my favorite lunch item: the omu curry ($14), which has steamed white rice with a thin omelette and beef curry. This doesn’t look that special, but the taste is crazy special. For a period of time, I went to ISHI and ate this curry lunch for so many weeks in a row because I was addicted to its amazing flavor. I love this curry primarily because of the super delicious beef, chopped bite-size with great seasoning. Some bits of steak had a char and other bites had juicy ribbons of rendered fat only made more delicious drowned in savory curry. Steamed rice absorbed the sauce, and the delicate egg, with the texture of crepe, tasted so good with the beefy curry.
My husband ordered the kaisen don with tuna and salmon ($20), served over steamed white rice with cucumbers, dried nori, a plop of wasabi, and a side of soy sauce. The rice bowl had both raw bluefin tuna and Norwegian salmon in addition to seared cuts of the same. Gently torched, the fish’s texture remained silky and the ever-so scorched taste of the sear was incredible. The sashimi slices of tuna and salmon were the perfect tender texture and utterly delicious.
These two dishes are our go-to orders here, but ISHI usually offers other lunch dishes: sashimi, seared salmon salad, okomiyaki, and other rice bowls. Take a look at the lunch menu from last week.
ISHI offers lunch three days a week, and the restaurant switches to an omakase menu on Fridays and Saturdays. ISHI’s omakase is by reservation only. In 2022, we named ISHI’s omakase the BEST unique dining experience; check out Paul’s review of ISHI’s omakase. In the same building, Chef’s wife owns and operates a bakery called Kaori’s Oven. For more about it, read Matt’s recent review of the baked goods.
For those who’ve never been, finding a hidden gem restaurant without a sign sounds tricky, but I believe in you. Think about where Jarling’s is on Kirby Avenue, and across the street, there’s a huge plasma building. Turn into that lot, and go to the right. ISHI restaurant is the nondescript building, in the space where Yellowfin restaurant used to be.
ISHI restaurant
305 Cedar St
Champaign
lunch
T-Th 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
omakase
F 11:30 a.m., 3:30 p.m., 6 p.m.
Sa noon, 2:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m.
