Conveyor belt customizes Ichiriki visit

It was a different world when Issei Kazama and Riki Koba­yashi opened their first Ichiriki nabe restaurant a decade ago on Piikoi Street, specializing in the Japanese hot pot.

The Chinese hot-pot craze had not yet begun, and customers were still largely happy to have nabe in prescribed, rather than personalized, sets.

Not anymore in a world where we can personalize anything from our T-shirts to our phones. Why not our food?

Within 10 years Ichiriki restaurants have popped up in Aiea and Kaneohe, and now Kaimuki. But the newest is the local chain’s first to incorporate the conveyor belt, long popular in sushi restaurants, allowing guests to take their pick of ingredients to customize their pots instead of being limited to standard set meals.

The typical nabe set comes with meat, tsukune (chicken meatballs) and assorted vegetables, but there’s a waste factor if, say, you can’t stand bok choy and would prefer more won bok or other vegetable. The new arrangement offers all the customization the me generation and millennials could want.

My own taste over the past 10 years has been shaped by the Chinese hot-pot wave. Years ago nabe was exciting because of the alchemy one could create with multiple soup base, meat and vegetable options.

But Ichiriki’s sauce choices are limited to ponzu, sesame and soy sauce, plus shichimi pepper if you want. I found myself longing for more of the sauces common to the Chinese hot pot — chili sauce and cilantro at a minimum — before catching myself in a culinary non sequitur. Ha-ha, wrong cuisine. The Japanese way is to embrace the purity and natural flavors of ingredients. If you really need hot sauce, Sriracha is kept in the kitchen, and they are happy to provide some on request.

Compared with other Ichiriki restaurants, the Kaimuki location is limited in appetizers offered. Poke, other raw seafood dishes and most of the salads did not make the journey. What you can get are deep-fried dishes of calamari ($6), garlic shrimp ($6) and french fries ($3), but most people waste no time getting to the main attraction, which starts with the choice of one of 13 soup bases ($6) for a personal pot.

Best-selling broths are the Ichiriki (soy-sauce base) and Pirikara (spicy soy sauce). I like a stronger, richer broth, so my favorite is the Paitan (pork). I’m intrigued by the ginger, Tom Yum, curry and yuzu kosho broths that I’ll have to try later. Angry Goma is tempting because of its name, but beware of this one. It’s fiery, spiced with jalapeno and habanero peppers, so much so I couldn’t detect any goma, or sesame.

At the same time you order your broth, you can select meat at $5 per order of chicken, pork loin and seafood; $6 for USDA Choice short rib and Kurobuta pork; and $9 for rib-eye or combos of short rib and pork or rib-eye and pork. I find the pork more flavorful than the rib-eye, but the beef perks up nicely with ponzu sauce.

Once you’ve got the basics, the rest of the action is grab-and-eat. They’ve made it easy to calculate what you’re spending because conveyor belt ingredients — mostly vegetables — are an affordable $2 per plate. Pick six — a satisfying number — and if you’re there with a friend and skip the meat, your meal will be a very reasonable $12 each once you factor in the cost of your individual broths.

Among the 28 selections are kabocha, crunchy arabiki sausage, shiitake and other mushrooms, tofu, leafy greens, sweet potato, ramen, udon and chikuwa, a tubular fishcake. Tsukune in a bamboo tube for dividing yourself is $3.

If that’s not affordable enough, during daily happy hours — 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and 9 p.m. to one hour before closing — all broth is $3, drink specials start at $2.50 and pupu from the appetizer list are also discounted.