JAPANESE FOOD IN EL CERRITO

As many of you know, we're still searching for a good Japanese restaurant near where we live. We'd heard of a Japanese sushi place near our home called Yusan Sushi, so we wanted to check it out. Unfortunately when we arrived, we found the restaurant closed, with a pretty cryptic note on the door. It said "Reopening Soon", but was dated three days earlier. As we stood outdoors contemplating whether or not the restaurant would open that night, we noticed another restaurant next door called Yokohama Restaurant. Given that we didn't have many other restaurants nearby to choose from, we decided to check it out.

When we entered the restaurant, it was pretty empty, but it was cute, with your stereotypical Japanese restaurant decorations. We were seated right away and after putting in our orders, we were given a few freebies, a little plate of cold soba noodles along with some pickles.

They weren't too bad, and I was pretty suprised that they gave us these freebies in the first place. With my dinner, I also got a salad, which was pretty average.

For dinner, I ordered a combination- chicken on chicken. Well, it was more that I got to pick from a list of foods, so I chose chicken karage (which was done as chicken wings) and chicken teriyaki. Here it is below:

As you can see, the portions are pretty generous, and it wasn't too bad either. Tom and I decided that it certainly wasn't the best Japanese food that we've ever had (nor the cheapest, we spent about $15-18/ea for dinner), but it was better than some of the places we had tried previously (and certainly better then Katana-ya, where our cousin likes to visit frequently). I don't think we'll be back any time soon, we'll continue to visit LA for truly great Japanese food, but if we're ever in the mood, we'd certainly go back to Yokohama.