Food & Drink

Happiest Hour

Wann Japanese Izakaya

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Kelly O

Wann Japanese Izakaya is a restaurant and bar with a harmonious layout: all neat rectangles, lacquered surfaces, gridded wood screens, and clean white cushions. Beige accent walls made of grooved plaster replicate raked sand. A couple rock-and-moss terrariums are inlaid in the dining-room floor, so precise and segmented and color-coordinated and well-lit that walking on them imparts a certain retro-futuristic-museum- diorama-spacecraft-fantasy-garden-wonderland effect.

Namesake happenings: Wann is a chain that's popular in Japan—the name is also slang for a top-banana overachiever, and "wan-wan" describes the sound of a dog's bark, which, just like "woof-woof," works in a limited way. Because really, what words could ever describe this noise that, were it made visible, would drift up and form murky brown, splintering, meatball-shaped puddles?

Happy hours: Mon–Tues noon–2:30 pm and 4 pm–close, Wed–Sun 4–7 pm, and, in the bar only, daily 10 pm–close.

Happy-hour drink specials: Select $4 cocktails—the Cassis Oolong has black currant liqueur and oolong tea; $5 cosmopolitans; $4 house wine; $3.50 drafts (Sapporo, Kirin Ichiban, Mac & Jack's); $4 wells; $4–$5 hot, nigori, or fruit-infused sake.

Happy-hour food specials: A fabulously long menu including $6 salmon poke; $3 kushikatsu deep-fried kabob; $4 yam fries; $4 shrimp shu mai; $5 udon; $5.50 spider roll; $10 sashimi set with tuna, salmon, yellowtail, albacore, and octopus. recommended

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Comments (9) RSS

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9
I love-love-love this place! The photo, my bad, as it's not mentioned in the text, is the official Wann Oyster Shooter.

Huge, delicious, raw. It'll put hair on your chest.
Posted by Kelly O on December 7, 2012 at 1:54 PM · Report
8
Great happy hour for sure. One of the few spots you can reliably find decent takoyaki near downtown.
Posted by thename on December 7, 2012 at 9:24 AM · Report
WFM 7
Giving a glowing review to a Japanese restaurant on Pearl Harbor Day? Why do you hate America?
Posted by WFM on December 7, 2012 at 9:19 AM · Report
jackie treehorn 6
Really dependably disinterested / apathetic servers and bartenders at this place. Expect to wonder if they care to sell you anything at all. Food and booze are fine.
Posted by jackie treehorn on December 7, 2012 at 9:08 AM · Report
5
Their Cosmopolitan seems to have gone lumpy.
Posted by suddenlyorcas on December 7, 2012 at 8:33 AM · Report
DVNODVNO 4
That looks delicious! I can't find it on the menu! ?!
Posted by DVNODVNO on December 7, 2012 at 7:36 AM · Report
3
How can this be posted with a picture of a mysterious drink containing an egg yolk but without a description of the mysterious drink? Not even a caption? If I go to the restaurant, do I order a "KELLY O?"
Posted by Spank my ass and call me a bitch. on December 7, 2012 at 7:14 AM · Report
OOF POOF 2
@1 Soup by the thimbleful?
Posted by OOF POOF on December 7, 2012 at 6:41 AM · Report
1
Okay, but what's that thing in the photograph?
Posted by Orsh on December 7, 2012 at 6:12 AM · Report

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