Some restaurants are so charming, so utterly right, that all a restaurant critic wants to do is keep them a jealously guarded secret. So it’s completely perverse of me to admit that Takohachi is one of those rare birds, with all the distinguishing markings. To wit: It’s a small, family-run business in the International District. It’s survived eight years in Seattle’s quicksilver restaurant scene largely through the devoted patronage of Japanese students. And it serves food so simply good, at such affordable prices, that you will want to—and be able to—make it a weekly habit.
Takohachi
610 S Jackson, 682-1828 dinner Mon-Sat; lunch Mon-Fri major credit cards, cash, no checks
Owner Chozaburo Kobayashi has been cooking for 50 years, starting at his father’s restaurant, also called Takohachi, on the island of Shikoku, Japan. He took over the business at his mother’s behest when he was 21, after his father passed away. His dream to go to America was put on the back burner until she too passed away. When he finally moved here, he was 48 years old.
Mr. Kobayashi first worked as a fish cook, then operated a Takohachi in Kirkland for five years before opening the one in Seattle. Wife Yoshi is hostess and server. Daughter Misako helps in the kitchen and paints the watercolors of special dishes that adorn the walls. On my first visit, chiri nabe ($6.95) was the featured painting; the actual dish was a steaming broth with tofu, vegetables, chicken, white fish, and noodles, served with rice and tsukemono (pickled cabbage slivers). Mild and soothing, just right for the frosty early-summer evening.
A couple of weeks later, there was a portrait of yasai ramen ($3.75-$5.95), a very slurpable mix of spicy stir-fried vegetables, sweet carrots, and gratifyingly chewy noodles. The empty bowl that’s provided is for cooling down each bite. For a dollar extra, a bowl of fried rice comes alongside—the savory rice glistens with bacon fat and is dotted with peas, carrots, onions, and tiny crumbles of bacon.
Takohachi will remind diners bred in the West of the little noodle shop in the movie Tampopo. Outside, the only eye-catching feature on the plain storefront is a bright red octopus. The main dining room is bare-bones and well-scrubbed, with a few booths and tables. There’s also a dark side room that looks like an old karaoke lounge. To Japanese students, Takohachi is just the cure for a homesick palate—partly because of the “American-style” Japanese cooking that’s served here and partly because of the fatherly Mr. Kobayashi. When I asked what his cooking philosophy was, the answer, translated through his daughter Shoko, was simply, “To keep the price as low as possible. The students have to save money because of the troubles back home.”
Non-Japanese customers typically order bento: Here that means a lustrous cube of egg, a sliver of grilled salmon, shrimp tempura, and a fried piece of chicken in one bowl. In another, there’s squash, carrots, lotus root, and boiled green soybeans. Rice, miso soup, and tsukemono complete this perfect meal, which is precisely balanced both nutritionally and in flavor. Larger appetites may want to start with the California roll ($3.50) or the elegant takaki ($6.75), thin slices of roast beef to be dipped in a vinegar sauce. Another popular option are the different ramen combinations, in soup or stir-fried form.
Student-regulars prefer the combination meals ($6.95-$8.45) of “hamburg steak,” croquettes, and other options, says Shoko. The hamburger’s resemblance to what’s more commonly known by that name stops with the patty shape: This version is slathered with Mr. Kobayashi’s delicious, tangy-sweet barbecue sauce. You break the patty apart with chopsticks to eat it with mouthfuls of rice and cabbage salad.
The croquettes are a similarly clever interpretation of a Western dish. The steaming heart of these deep-fried potato puffs tastes like the most ethereal, delicate mashed potatoes in the world. Other options for the combination dinners include fried pork cutlets, chicken, various fish, and tempura. Everything, whether broiled or fried, tastes light, but never bland, and all the parts of the meal mesh beautifully.
My favorite meal here is perhaps the most traditionally Japanese: black cod kasuzuke ($8.45), a slice of cod brushed with a special miso paste that is broiled until the skin crisps. The rich meat melts in the mouth just like butter—and taste like it too. My second-favorite is the powerful shioyaki saba (broiled mackerel, $7). Cooked just like the cod, the mackerel has no need of extra flavor—nothing could overcome the heady, oily stink of this fish anyway. Fishy oil oozes in between the strands of flesh, and go wonderfully with the requisite bowl of rice, soup, salad, and tsukemono. For mackerel-eaters only!
Dessert being a Western habit, there’s none served at Takohachi. You won’t need it for your experience here to be perfect. As for me, I’ll be glowering in the corner, kicking myself for ever having written this.
