| rev:text
| - Roka Akor isn't my typical type place. I usually find that the food I love comes from places where they have put their heart and soul into the food and just ground it out. Sometimes these places look nice but often they're not too fancy and they rarely look anything like Roka Akor.
Roka Akor is beautiful and huge. The decor is modern and tasteful. They have a great lounge, a huge featured sushi and robata bar and oodles and oodles of wood (which I dig).
So often when you see these huge, gorgeous spaces obviously funded by a good deal of investor money, it's all business driven and the organization has lost some focus on the food.
That's not the case with Roka Akor. I've been there the past 2 nights (and before) for their happy hour and had some stellar dishes.
I'm a Japanese food freak so anything new & out of the ordinary piques my interest. I've been waiting forever to have a real izakaya or kaiseki place in Phoenix.
Roka Akor is rolling out an izakaya concept in their lounge. For this first week, they are also doing a special where all food and beverages are $2 (through 11/25). It's absolutely crazy not to check this out.
While I wouldn't say this an authentic izakaya, I'm a big fan of what they are doing. I tried most of the izakaya menu over the past two days and had some killer dishes.
The tenkatsu fried pork belly is completely ridiculous. It is right up there with some of my favorite bites in recent memory. Then I also had their burger on a homemade sesame bun. Definitely order this medium rare. We had a couple ordered medium temp that came a bit overdone. The meat was tasty though and the thing that put it over the top was the awesome bun. Super flavorful - absolutely made the dish. They also use this bun on the cremini mushroom burger with wasabi aioli. Also very nice. Last night I also got to sample their Chinese style glazed pork ribs off the normal menu - amazing. I was already completely stuffed but it still made a huge impression.
As far as other things on their izakaya menu, I'm a big fan of hamachi kama and enjoyed their version. Would have been killer with a bit of ponzu sauce. Robata grilled unagi was very nice and the fried soft shell crab with mixed salad greens was excellent. We also enjoyed the butterfish tataki with white asparagus and yuzu. The list is getting long but we really didn't run across any major misfires at all. Enjoyed the sweet corn tempura with sea salt, braised short ribs with daikon, agedashi tofu & hamachi serrano chili roll.
For me the definite standout was the pork belly though. I kind of went through that list in order of preference. I enjoyed it all - actually a bit surprising.
They also have a bunch of great drinks. Over the past 2 days, I had the shochu & tonic (barley shochu with spash of yuzu juice and tonic), tanuki peach (again - shochu & fresh peach puree) & sake-tini (lychee). All were great.
The last several visits there we've also had excellent service. The staff has been super nice and super attentive. We even brought our young kids (5 & 2) after calling & making sure it was alright. While they are very well behaved, it is still nice to see them welcomed in.
I expect that this happy hour will stay in the rotation. Great food, great drinks. Nice value.
And I also have seen some wonderful looking sushi come out as well so we have to come back and go that route.
While it doesn't look like the places that fall into the norm of what I typically like, I can't help but be a big fan.
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