Labor Day Weekend Special

To celebrate Labor Day this weekend, we are proud to announce a special opportunity to get 15% off your dinner meals if you decide to eat with us on Friday and/or Saturday night.

We will be facilitating this special by using a secret code word. This code word will enable us to track who is coming in for the holiday special and who is just randomly dining with us and not even paying attention to all of our special Internet promotions (they're missing out).

Without further adieu, the secret code word(s) is: LABOR DAY.

Tough one, isn't it? Hopefully, you'll be able to remember it.

All you have to do is come in on either Friday, September 3rd for dinner from 7pm to close, or on Saturday, September 4th from 7pm to close, say the word, and we will take 15% off your entire check.

We're honored to be able to give all of you hard workers an inexpensive and relaxing night of our delicious Japanese food. It really is the least we can do.

Tell your friends and we hope to see all of you for dinner to celebrate the long holiday weekend.

Ordering Sushi From an iPad = Cool!

You better believe that if we had a larger and wider demographic to try to target that we would have already built some innovative technologies to help our customers enjoy and interact with our restaurant even more.

Recently on this blog, we've covered sushi iPhone apps, online games, and other cool innovative advances in the Japanese cuisine market.

Today, we wanted to highlight the latest and greatest innovation we've seen in the market. Now, you are able to order sushi from an interactive menu on your iPad.

We can argue that ordering via Twitter is still awesome and effortless for our customers, but having an iPad application that you can look at and touch everyday probably trumps the Twitter idea anyday.

Take a look at this video of the application in use and let us know if you think more restaurants should start adopting this type of application and whether or not you think this could improve upon sales and customer satisfaction.

If only we were a large corporation with multiple locations. We would definitely be working on launching something similar to this as we publish this blog post.

Cooking Sushi Rice in a Rice Cooker

After scouring the Internet, we found a random post / complaint from someone that had attempted to cook sushi rice at home in a rice cooker. This is what was posted:

I just bought a Cuisinart 8-cup rice cooker and tried to cook sushi rice in it for the first time. It was a disaster! Waaay to sticky & mushy. I cooked Japanese sweet rice and used the ratio recommended on the package (not for rice cookers) which was 1 1/c cups of rice to 3 cups of water. My instruction booklet did not give a ratio for this type of rice but it has another one for “sushi rice” which is 3 cups of rice, using the rice cooker measuring cup, and 2 1/4 cups of water plus 2 tablespoons of sake. Perhaps I should have used that? When I added 3 cups of water to the rice in the cooker, it came to the “2″ line. What did I do wrong??? I have made nearly perfect sushi rice on the stove before but wanted the cooker for convenience. Help!!

 

We wanted to post about this because we have talked about cooking your own sushi at home before. It's fun and exciting and if you're going to put forth the effort to try it, we want you to do it properly so that your meal takes how you want it.

 

 

So our response is below. This is how it is done.

 

You cook the rice using equal parts rice and water. Before cooking the rice, rinse the rice until the water runs almost clear. Next, cook your rice in the rice cooker until it's done and open the rice cooker to let the rice dry out a little bit. In a small pot, mix 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar with 1/4 cup sugar and a pinch of salt, and heat until the sugar is dissolved. Put the rice into a separate bowl and add vinegar mixture to rice until you have reached the stickiness level desired. Try not to mix the rice too much to prevent mushy rice. Finally, enjoy your perfectly seasoned sticky sushi rice.

No one said making sushi was easy. Haha.

10% Off All Catering In August

In our last email newsletter (hint hint: you should subscribe), we talked about how we now cater all types of events.

Imagine having a spread of sushi like this at your next event.

This time, we're going to take that announcement a step further by offering 10% off all catering jobs in the month of August.

We can do large parties, business luncheons, and virtually any other type of get together. Just give us a call to book us in advance.

And as most of you already know, we can also bring our Naked Sushi extravaganza to parties. That adds so much fun and excitement to any party.

Interesting Japanese Dining

I just read an article that takes the notion that a lot of Asian dining rituals are odd to a completely new level.

The above picture introduces the new Japanese dining experience that I am now calling "The Surgeon Cannibal."

According to the article I read, it is "...a pinata-like 'body' is carefully crafted, then stuffed with edible goodies in a red sauce. More 'sauce' is somehow embedded into the outside covering - 'skin'... - of the body so that it will appear to bleed when cut into..."

The red sauce would have to be absolutely magnificent for me to even try this.

What do you guys think about this? Would you try it?

Teach Me Sushi iPhone Application

Teach Me Sushi, known for providing fun and hands-on sushi making lessons throughout the New York area, today announced that its iPhone application has been named “App of the Week” in the U.K. iPhone App Store.

The application features a set of well-produced videos, from beginner to advanced, that walks a user through the entire process of making your own sushi rolls at home. The app covers a wide assortment of dish options and also features visual diagrams to accompany the instructional videos.

It's obvious that part of the sushi-making process is finding the right ingredients. Fortunately, the app even goes as far to find your current location and point you in the direction of your nearest Japanese market. It doesn't get much easier than that.

The application was created by Drew Lavyne of the filmmaking company Six Minute Stories and trained sushi chef Jake Davidow, creator and founder of Teach Me Sushi. “I have been completely humbled by the response – I never thought it would take off like this,” said Davidow. “I get at least 10 emails a day from people in all parts of the world telling me how much they love the app. It’s an uplifting feeling to know so many people find value in what we’ve been able to put together.”

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
* Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later
* 351 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Teach Me Sushi 1.0 is normally priced at $6.99. In celebration of its launch, throughout the month of July Teach Me Sushi is being offered at a special promotional rate of $4.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Lifestyle category.

Teach Me Sushi 1.0
Purchase and Download
Screenshot
App Icon

Facebook and Twitter Discounts!

At Ichiban, we strive to always remain on the cutting edge of social media, technology, and our local community. That is why we are now announcing another new Facebook and Twitter campaign that allows users and community members to receive discounts whenever they eat in our restaurant. Here's how it works:

Whenever you are in our restaurant, be sure to create a status update on Facebook or post a tweet mentioning that you're eating with us. Our Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/orlandoichiban and our Twitter account can be found at http://www.twitter.com/orlandoichiban.

Take a picture of yourself eating sushi like this guy did, or you can save yourself from looking like a crazy person and just post an update about us. 

If you do this immediately while at your table and you do it properly, you will receive 10% off your check then and there. If we have to scour the web to find your update, just let your waiter know you did it and we will send you a digital coupon for the 10% off that you can use on your next visit.

It's as simple as that. The more you tell your friends how much you enjoy Ichiban, the more money you'll save.

Don't forget to find us on: Twitter and Facebook.