It’s a cool dry morning, a late autumn chill drifting through the high desert air. Just past Chinatown’s main plaza, I pull into the legendary Japanese restaurant Ichiza. The earliest izakaya (Japanese-style pub) in the valley, it’s been operating for more than 20 years.
A paragon of Las Vegas’ late-night dining scene, Ichiza gained a reputation as the only place in town where you could get quality Japanese food at 4 a.m. (there are others now). I can tell many tales from my wayward youth of pre-dawn beer pitchers, garlic-chicken gizzards, and honey toast devoured there. The dark wood counter packs with all manner of nightlife ghoul — punk rockers and club kids stretching the last moments of darkness by glutting themselves on rice and yakitori. It’s as boisterous a nightlife establishment as there ever was.
This morning is not that. Mellow J-pop trickles through the speakers as morning light traces the space’s contours. When I enter, the restaurant is empty, apparently in its cleanup and prep phase, judging from the two staff members moving lightly through the dining room and kitchen. The waitress seats me with a kind smile at a window seat and presents me with a Japanese breakfast menu.
Unlike American breakfasts, particularly orgiastic brunches that more closely resemble the Ichiza of 4 a.m., Japanese breakfast is beautifully simple. I can choose from five teishokus, or meal sets consisting of a main dish, soup, rice, and a side. There are options with beef, salmon, mackerel, and poached eggs, as well as chazuke (rice and other ingredients submerged in tea). Two somewhat heavier outliers stand out on the menu: Udon soup and a morning combo with sausage, eggs, toast, and a salad — the most Western dish on offer. There are a few small sides and onigiri (stuffed rice balls) for lighter fair. It’s a thorough set of choices, if understated, compared to the establishment’s sprawling dinner menu.
I order the saba miso (mackerel) teishoku and am presented with a bowl of rice, miso soup, pickled cucumbers, and a side of cooked spinach in sesame sauce. I add a side of natto, fermented soybeans — an acquired taste, to be sure, but a personal favorite. A light marinade brings out the fish's deep oceanic flavor. The pickles and soup are refreshing, like comfort food from a mother I’ve never known. The meal left me satiated but not stuffed, unlike the heavier breakfasts I’ve been eating all my life. A week later, I’ll return for the same meal, substituting poached egg for the mackerel, and experience the same sense of comfort, albeit among a slightly bigger crowd. A few older couples quietly converse, and two young women chat about their year.
Lately, I find myself most drawn to this option out of the many we have for the first meal of the day. Most are over-sweetened, over-sauced, and calorically dense. American-style breakfast is full of cheese, fatty meat, and triple-stacked, whipped-cream-on-top gimmicks built to pummel the senses. The Japanese breakfast at Ichiza is a cure for this excess. It proposes that a morning meal can be just that, a meal — not an event, nor a bottomless pass for day-drinking to dance music. Just clean, fulfilling food that I can enjoy in a contemplative corner of the world for a few moments before starting my day.