Ichidon
Ichidon is the newest Japanese restaurant specialized in donburi (rice bowls with various ingredients) and ramen.
Located in the Viale Monte Nero area, Ichidon takes its name from the master Haruo Ichikawa, of the Ichikawa restaurant: in fact, he gave his surname to this reality and took care of the part of the menu dedicated to raw fish.
Marinated daikon with sesame seeds and miso sauce was served as amuse bouche. Among the specialties that I tasted at dinner (at lunch you will find the same menu as in the evening, with the exception of some business lunches) I indicate gyoza stuffed with pork and vegetables and the chashu korokke (small croquettes filled with pieces of roast pork which externally resemble Korean gimmari) to be dipped in mayonnaise. Both courses are a bit small, but they are two appetizers.
As main courses I wanted to taste the house specialties, a bowl of rice and a ramen.
The proposed kaisen don follows what you can find at the Ichikawa restaurant, however in a more contained format, with fewer cuts of fine fish and for this reason slightly more economically accessible than the first. The rice and fish are very good and of excellent quality.
The ramen on the menu instead, whose recipes were not supervised by the master Ichikawa but by an Italian cook, include tonkotsu, shio (with a fish broth) and tokusei tsukemen. I tried the latter, a dish that I love very much and that virtually no Japanese restaurant offers in Milan. At first glance, the bowl appears very small, but as you taste it, it is the right amount to fill up. The amount of meat in the toppings is really important (no less than four different types), the noodles come directly from Japan and the very thick broth is made with pork, smoked fish and yuzu. If you order this dish, be sure to adjust it with any appetizers.
The rest of the menu offers other small dishes such as ikura potato sarada and various donburi such as yakiniku don or nasu don, with roasted eggplant spread with miso, a perfect dish for vegetarians. Except for the ice cream mochi, there are no desserts on the card.
I thought I'd find dishes that were very faithful to tradition, given that the property is the same as Ichikawa, however only the dishes with fish follow the master's style, while all the others I found contemporary and really very similar to those already proposed in other Japanese or Japanese-style restaurants in town, especially the ramen and small appetizers.
The restaurant is small but welcoming, embellished with intense colours. It is still quite bare, but being a very recent opening it will probably be heated up soon. There is no doubt that this is a restaurant in the running-in phase, although the prices are not popular.
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