Japanese Restaurants in Antioch

Mikado Bistro's foodsmiths craft flaming wokfuls of favorite Chinese and Japanese dishes, along with plating delicate slices of fresh sushi. Diners can kick off consumption with the hearty crunch of fried wontons ($3.95), and edamame's ($2.95) boiled soybeans spring from their ancestral pods into waiting mouths. Chopsticks peck like foraging antique hunters at signature sushi rolls, such as the Golden Phoenix, a pile of slender disks of unagi, cucumber, crab, tuna, and avocado ($14.95) traditionally served as still-flaming ashes. Patrons can dive into two-item bento boxes ($11.95) filled with such goodies as vegetable tempura, chicken teriyaki, or sushi rolls, or scoop up helpings of succulent mu shu pork ($6.95) with chewy pancakes.

Prices vary by location.

Nama Sushi is named for its wide-ranging list of handmade sushi, but the restaurant's chefs also craft steamy dinnertime feasts featuring nutritious buckwheat noodles, crispy tempura vegetables, and teriyaki specialties. The team whips up seafood-filled udon soups, grills barbecue short ribs, deep-fries pork cutlets, and tosses chicken in spicy sauce. For diversified meals, they pile Japanese goodies onto combination dinners served with mixed tempura, miso salad, and rice.

Featured on Best of the Bay, Kobe Japan's menu of colorful sushi plates and entertaining hibachi draw in streams of steak- and seafood-lovers. After an appetizer of bacon-wrapped Tsunami shrimp ($7.50), patrons may peruse the six-page sushi menu, which showcases a creative collection of seaweed-and-rice roll-ups. The Titanic roll balances shrimp tempura, tuna, spicy crab meat, and salmon ($14.95), and the Hippo roll snuggles yellow tail, tuna, and salmon tighter than a scuba suit's bear hug ($8.95). Those feasting from the hibachi menu can pair sips of house sake ($7) with certified-Angus New York steak, served hot off an iron griddle to flame-kiss mouth-buds with juicy flavor ($22).

Although Hamachi Restaurant Lounge’s culinary team masterfully crafts common sushi such as Alaska rolls and California hand rolls, they don’t limit themselves to tradition. The chefs orchestrate more than 10 original rolls, harmonizing lobster and seaweed salad in the Harajuku and arranging scallop and spicy mayo into the Romeo and Juliet. In addition to rolling delicacies, they compose artful plates of deep-fried prawns with tempura sauce, and beef and chicken lightly coated in a special teriyaki sauce. After meals, diners can groove to tunes spun by live DJs each Thursday through Saturday night or bid for the right to hear “We Built This City” for an 11th straight time during dueling pianos every Friday and Saturday evening.

Japanese cuisine is as much a form of art as it is a delicacy, and the chefs at Little Madfish put their creative talents on display while crafting more than 50 unique sushi rolls. Bento-box lunch specials combine teriyaki meats with delectable sushi, and sushi party platters feed 3–8 people or one shark too lazy to gather its own seafood. Diners can complement their meals of teriyaki-slathered chicken or braised short ribs with sake and imported Japanese beers.