How have I not discovered Ichiban before now? I grew up in England eating Chinese food, and Peking Duck was always my favourite dish. I've been yearning for it years and here it is. A whole Peking Duck, just as I remember! With spring onions and hoisin sauce. Absolutely delicious! We also ordered a combination fried rice, and my son ordered Teriyaki beef. Both were equally delicious. Ichiban will be a regular haunt for our family from now on. read more

Food are ok in quality or taste,but not in quantity and the waiting for food is long. If you can eat a lot or come in hungry, then this would not be your ideal choice. read more

I have been going here for years and have not been disappointed. Whether you're getting take out or eating in the food is great. The sushi I would have to say is some of the best in Williamsburg and on weekdays during lunch they have an all you can eat sushi lunch. Just be warned if you do not finish all the sushi you order, you are expected to pay for it. The atmosphere is really nice and can be used as a place for special dinners and events. read more

This is my go to for sushi and chinese food. Good prices and excellent product! Try the spicy girl roll YUM! Just went for takeout due to the virus and I was impressed!! Food was on time to the minute snd packaged just right but better they stop at entry have a plastic barrier and even have sanitized pens to sign your charge slip. I can't wait to go back snd sit in this lovely place! read more

food is great. service is great... I would like to give a 4/5 for getting rid of the lunch Buffet ( it was my favorite)... the food is always fresh and isnt very crowded. the only times it was too crowded was when they had the lunch Buffet. Please bring back the lunch buffet. read more

I ordered the spicy tuna sushi roll. I'll tell ya, I thought it was tuna cat nip. I never had ground tuna in my life and I thought it was a slap in the face for sushi masters. read more

If you are planning to go for all you can eat lunch special, make sure to order as much food as possible before 2:30 because they won't let you know that you can't order past it. Horrible customer service, we waited for an hour for a small appetizer and when we finally asked for an update they said that the time was closed to order. So we paid the all you can eat price for an appetizer and one roll! So fantastically disappointing that the waitress couldn't be transparent while serving others who sat after us their food. Can not tell if they were being ageist, racist, or just plainly ignorant. read more

Everything surpassed our expectations here. We had the Honey Roll, Rock shrimp, and house duck dish. Nothing fried was too heavy or soggy. The flavors were amazing. The server was very attentive and we weren't rushed at all. Beautiful decor and ambience which was perfect for a date night. The prices were very reasonable considering the atmosphere and how good the food was. Would definitely come back here again. read more

Food was great. All you can eat. I take my kids. We get as much sushi as we can. Fills up the table

This place is garbage. Don't ever go here. The service is a joke and the food is nothing special. Go to Peter Chang's. Any Chinese restaurant in Williamsburg is better. They have the deceptive facade of being located in New Town. They pay the rent to pretend they can actually cook a meal. It's a joke. If you still decide to go there, don't be surprised after an hour wait and your food sucks. You're going to say the random guy on Yelp was right. read more

Ok so maybe 5 is pushing it but definitely 4 stars. Great atmosphere, great( excellent) service and wonderful food that is too much to finish! I have lived in Williamsburg over a year now and this is my first time here. It was more than a pleasant surprise. You won't be disappointed! read more

Got take out during the coronavirus outbreak absolutely wonderful food Sesame chicken is fresh had a light taste very tender. Egg drop soup the best I've had in 20 years. Will definitely start eating there more. One order of orange chicken fed two people easily read more

Amazing service and amazing food! Highly recommend!! Had sushi, apps, and drunken noodles. Flavors were superb!

The food is delicious but: Be prepared to wait. While this restaurant has a very clean and formal atmosphere and it appears like there is plenty of staff, it seems that there is an inadequate number of them in the back of the house which results in long wait times even if it doesn't seem too busy. We started our order with a fried calamari and two bowls of soup as the appetizer along with two rolls of sushi to pace ourselves. It took about 30 minutes for our appetizer and soups to arrive and it wasn't until an hour in that we got our sushi rolls. We also ordered some of the kitchen food which was delivered much faster and was also extremely tasty. This restaurant provides delicious lunch and a great variety of choices but you MUST be prepared to wait for it. read more

We're from NY and not used to being in places where restaurants close just when the night is getting started. But I guess you can't expect anything more when you're in the middle of nowhere. My family and I rushed to Ichiban after a day of fun at Busch Gardens, craving something non-oily and non-fattening. We rushed with the hopes of making it there before closing time. As a party of 9, the hostess looked wistful when we asked for a table, and the prospect of a table did not look promising. Yet, the manager made a huge effort to set a table up for us at 9:10, and gave us wonderful, kind service. Just what we needed after a long, tiring, rainy day at the park. The food was good, and though perhaps not quite NY quality flavor, the hospitality and great service enhanced the dining experience. We were really tired and disheartened by the 9:00 closing time of all the restaurants we could find, and we were grateful that Ichiban accommodated us in a pinch, and that their closing time was 9:30. Thanks, Ichiban. I highly recommend this restaurant if you find yourself visiting Williamsburg in the future. read more

A good way to have customers never come back, insult them because a dish they ordered was nasty. The manager of this establishment is extremely rude and he is not friendly to the customers. My girlfriend and I ordered a dish that did not taste right. We did not eat it, when the bill came it was still there. We asked to speak to the manager and the waitress told us he was busy making sushi and couldn't talk to us. Finally he came out cause he saw us waiting. He rudely told us that he wasn't removing the dish from the bill and that he was calling the cops on us. He never tried to solve the issue nor did he care that we had spent a lot of money there in the past. He tried to tell us to not say anything to the cops about him being rude. First of all, im paying for good customer service as well as good food. The incident was recorded, I will be showing the poor customer service to others. I will never go back and I will make it my mission to show others how they treat their customers. ALSO I have recently found out that other people have experienced this kind of treatment as well. If you can't treat your customers right then why are you in business? read more

I absolutely love this restaurant! The service is impeccable. They are extremely polite and helpful. They follow the Japanese custom of bringing you a hot towel before being served. The restaurant is so pretty. The decor is lovely with jade art pieces behind the hostess stand. I love eating on the patio - people watching in New Town. You can see and hear the fountain from there too. I usually just order sushi and all of the rolls are delicious. Locals and tourists cannot pass up this place! read more

Ichiban - Japanese Near Me - Williamsburg, Virginia

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We just moved to Williamsburg and have ordered take out from Ichiban twice, and ate in once. We have had their sushi, noodle plates, chicken plate, tempura, and both hot and sour and wonton soup and everything has been very tasty. They have the most amazing service, even when they are busy they make sure they take care of everything, and even start by giving you these warm towels for your hands. Really great service, food, and clearly owners. read more

Great food. Some servers are very nice. Others don't have much personality. This place gets VERY BUSY. So expect a wait. For the all you can eat lunch we typically spend about 2 hours there. It's not perfect but it's the best available in Williamsburg. It's also beautifully decorated and clean. read more

Waited 30 min for 1 water refill ordered a soup and waited 15 min to get my crispy noodles for my soup. Every table around us was offered a warm towel up sitting except my my table. Still sitting. Beem 45 min since ive ordered and now 2 other tables who came after us are now eating there main course. read more

Doesn't look like much because it isn't much. Ordered veggie dumplings with extra sauce. Got half a cup full of sauce and the dumplings were cold on delivery. Had a side salad with the duck. Asked for extra Blue Cheese dressing and they sent a single 1000 Island dressing. The dumplings were cold, the duck was cold and the fried rice was cold. Silly me, I thought the food was supposed to be hot. Not ordering from you again. 27.00 for cold food? read more

DO NOT EAT HERE. This is the worst restaurant food and service I've ever been to. They have buffet and order all you want .. but it takes them 1 hour to bring your food .. so dont waste your time. All the waitress are very very rude. When we follow up or order, she got angry and said 'I am not your waitress. Wait for your waitress.' But i said, we have not seen her for more than 30 minutes. And she said .. She will come. So rude. And when we paid up, the said they will charge an extra 25% because we did not finish the white rice, and you must finish everything with the eat all you can. This is the worst restaurant ever. read more

Got food delivered from here to the hotel my family was staying at. Was looking forward to the meal but I sadly was left disappointed. Nothing was particularly bad but it was all lackluster. The best thing I got from them was the tempura fried cheesecake. The cake and batter complimented each other and the dish was overall good if not anything special. Next best was my gyoza. The had a good flavor but that flavor was so weak I Barely got any of it and the sauce it came with wasn't to my liking. Next up was the Hong Kong style noodles. Maybe this dish is better in house but what I got left with was a massive container of extremely fried noodles and a soup container full of vegetables and meat I was somehow supposed to bring together despite having no room. The sauce on the meat was good but there wasn't really enough of it for the size of the portion. Finally my wonton soup was entirely flavorless. Nothing had any flavor not the broth not the wontons themselves. Also I got no silverware provided for me to use and being in a hotel that was an issue I had a good bit of trouble working around. Overall I'm disappointed. Nothing was bad but I probably wouldn't order from here again read more

Don't waste your time coming here. I ordered 3 items and it was all a disappointment. I ordered a shrimp tempura appetizer. Whatever batter they use for the shrimp was still raw. I also ordered a tempura sushi roll, it was skinny and about 4 pieces. Last but not least my husband asked the person taking the order if he could get a dish with the thin white noodles. He got a dish with thick noodles. Paid over 30 dollars for horrible food. Called management and they wanted me to bring back food. I told her I lived 20 minutes away and was not driving there at 8:30 pm. read more

I would definitely go back there again, at least for lunch because while it's not a buffet style set up, it is an all-you-can-eat menu for lunch and priced just a little over $12. The variety of Asian-style meals, which can range from sushi, to lo-mien, to shrimp fried rice, sashimi, fried calamari and many types of soups. The options are enormous! The only two drawbacks I saw were that you can't take the food with you (which is normal at a buffet or an AYCE place) and, if you can't eat what you ordered, you must pay for it. For example, if they bring you nine California rolls that you are too full to finish, they may charge you up to $9 for the uneaten food. I recognized our waitress from a previous job she had in another city and she recognized me too, so our waitress experience was tremendous. I'm sure my Grubbing Guru group enjoyed themselves. We are planning to return a week after our initial voyage. Stand by ... more pictures to follow. read more

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Before you read this review, you should know this about me: I'm Chinese American, love Asian food, and have lived in places that have good Asian food (Boston, Atlanta, Seattle). I just finished dinner tonight with my family. After spending more than $60, I'm left quite disappointed. We ordered the hamachi kama (collar bone of a yellowtail). It was pretty good, but as an appetizer it should have come out before the actual dinner. In fact, it came out after all dinner dishes were served. Hamachi Kama is a bit pricey, so I expect it to be really good, especially for $10. It was ... decent. My wife ordered a Sweetheart roll that looked like they had forgotten to serve the other half of it (i.e., it was extremely small). $12.00 for a roll that could be polished off in under 5 minutes. And it wasn't really that great either--not bad, but not great. Not worth paying $12. I ordered something really simple: Beef Ho Fun. At $12, I'd expect to get a big bowl of it that I could comfortably share with another person. Not so. Pretty wimpy serving, and taste-wise, again, not bad, but not great. Not worth $12. Finally, the kids split a Yaki Udon with shrimp. Flavors were definitely a bit off for this dish. And the shrimp looked and tasted UN-fresh. Again, not worth the $12 that we paid for the dish. Finally, the service, although they are polite, is S.L.O.W!!! They apologized, but by reading the other reviews for Ichiban, it appears that this is something that many have reported. Overall, they present themselves and PRICE themselves (both online and in person) as a fine-dining experience, where you would expect first-rate service and food (hence the name, right??). Unfortunately, you are paying fancy prices for average town dining. read more

I'm gonna pull the race-card here. I'm Japanese and while Ichiban has a Japanese name it is just...not. It seems like it's a Chinese restaurant with a terrible sushi bar. I've eaten the sushi twice. Both times it was just terrible. The more 'traditional' pieces like amaebi (sweet shrimp, one of my favorites) made me seriously consider spitting it out. Their fusion type rolls were just...over sauced with low quality rice. Very disappointing. Their (Chinese) lunch dishes are actually pretty decent. I am crazy about the garlic beef. Ichiban means "number one" in Japanese. I think not. read more

Great food sushi always fresh and meals plentiful in portions, Inside seating comfortable and service is good.

Extremely. Slow. Service. They don't seem to realize that their service is slow either. Very little attention is paid to the customer. I think this place would benefit from a larger waiting and kitchen staff. Also, the all you can eat deal is very strict. Not much of a good deal. read more

Ichiban - See the empty plate. - Japanese Near Me - Williamsburg, Virginia

I was craving "ethnic food" while visiting New Town, so I decided to eat here based on a pleasant Christmas dinner here last year. Chinese restaurants usually have reasonably priced lunch specials and this place did not disappoint. For $8 I got a sizzling plate of chicken teriyaki, a bowl of white rice, a hearty bowl of hot and sour soup and a plate of yummy crispy wonton strips. I'm not usually a big broccoli fan, but this meal made me a believer again. Good lunch sized portions. My server was attentive and I'm pretty sure he filled up my glass of water at least 10 times. But at least he did this quietly and didn't feel the need to ask me "how is everything?" during each stop. The interior design is really pretty, especially the wooden booths and the red rose patterned glass on the ceiling. This place would be awesome with a group of friends. They have two private rooms with Japanese style sliding doors, so you can talk as loud and crazy as you want without everyone staring at you and/or giving you dirty looks. There was a group when I was having lunch and it sounded like they were having A LOT of fun :) read more

I love the all you can eat menu. Singapore rice noodles and rock shrimp are delish, as well as all of the sushi I've tried! Will and have been back multiple times! :) read more

We'll this maybe small but my family just ordered from Ichibon for supper through DoorDash and didn't get the entire order, called restaurant and was told they were too busy to fulfill the missing item even though it was paid for! I have never been told that an item can not be replaced. Poor customer service. Supposedly I was talking to the owner, eaten there many times but they lost this family as customers!!!!!!!!!! read more

Not sure why this place has such bad reviews. It's the only place in Williamsburg that comes close to what I'm used to in New York. I've only ever come here for the lunch special. Did the all-you-can-eat once, which was good and definitely worth it, and have done the maki combo (2 or 3 rolls plus salad) multiple times, both eat-in and take-out. Never been disappointed. Be warned: Take-out in the middle of the day (for the lunch special) takes a little bit of time (~20 minutes) so order in advance or be prepared to wait! read more

I love this place!!! The staff is always very helpful, attentive, and polite. There is a lot to choose from on the menu, and they also have chinese food. Normally, this kind od hybrid restaurant would make e skeptical of the sushi, but ichiban has some great sushi chefs. Their rolls are creative and unique. try the jade roll, it's my favorite! There is also a patio garden that is wonderful to enjoy dinner on. read more

Kept us waiting for 2 HOURS for a table and then another hour to get our orders. We decided to go somewhere else after a while, and then the waitress told us that they just had a table available and that they were cleaning up a table for us, although we did not see any customer leave ( which I don't understand). Terrible service. The waitress was arrogant and was rude to us when we asked her to hurry up a little bit (I don't think it's unreasonable to rush her a bit after a two hour wait). Food was okay. You would think anything is good after a three-hour wait. Would stop any friend from going there. I'd rather learn to cook Peking duck myself than go back again to Ichiban. read more

To be fair, this is a solid 3.5 restaurant. It would be a four except for two things: one, the prices are more than a little high, even for a sushi place, but especially for Williamsburg; and two, our waiter. The story follows. Ichiban had been getting rave reviews from all my parents' friends. It's been here slightly over a year, and so they thought it was high time to visit when the kids were in town. Cool, because I'm always up for trying new places in "New Town." First of all, the restaurant is gorgeous. It's decorated in lovely imperial pieces, with these amazing carved wooden doors. It's an interesting mix of styles, we'll call it Pan-Asian like the food. There are two rooms which can be closed off to accommodate larger parties, probably on the order of 12-18 people. Our waiter must have just been hired, which impacted our experience here significantly. We had to ask repeatedly for simple items, like soy sauce dishes for our sushi, chopsticks, and more beer. His crowning achievement that night, however, which made us all chuckle, was pouring a glass of beer for my brother, giving the now-empty bottle to my brother, and then returning to the kitchen WITH the glass full of beer. Teehee. Charming if nothing else. The food itself was absolutely more than passable. I would probably recommend sticking to the Chinese food over the Japanese, especially since most of the staff is Chinese, but the sushi was acceptable. The spicy tuna was not as spicy as I liked, though yummy,, and the rolls were slightly large (as in, unwieldy to eat). We had the agedashi tofu, which came with a slightly different sauce than the traditional, more akin to hoisin but it was very tasty nonetheless. The edamame were cooked perfectly, but salted unevenly. And the tempure was somewhat soggy - I'm not entirely sure how that happens even. As for entrees, we had the mu shu chicken, which was yummy. It only came with 4 pancakes, so ask for more when you go or be prepared to eat it without the pancake. My dad had the sushi deluxe, which had a nice selection of fresh fishies. Bro & I shared the splendid roll (YUM, definitely would want to come back for more!), the super sweetheart roll (very cute presentation), the crunchy white fish roll (good enough), godzilla roll (didn't try), and the cowboy roll (at mom's request who is afraid of sushi, it's a grilled steak and avocado roll which sounded too disgusting for me to try but I think she liked it). There was an ENORMOUS amount of food. We could have left off the sushi deluxe combo, or two of the rolls, and still had leftovers. In addition, we noticed there were several Thai influenced dishes on the menu as well, which we didn't try this time. The one thing that seriously irritated me after a while was the fact that each sushi roll came out on a separate plate, in the French fashion where the plate is at least ten times the size of the food on the plate. With the amount of rolls we ordered (5, which I thought was quite reasonable for 4 people), the table filled up quickly and we ended up piling the sushi on the same plate just to make room for the rest of it. I definitely think they need to fix this presentation - either give us a larger table, or present us with smaller dishes, or actually make use of the space on the plate you give us. This restaurant is a shining star in Williamsburg. I hope the locals are demanding more now from their culinary experiences, which will surely help to improve this restaurant to find the right balance of cost, service, and flavors. As it is now, this is not the kind of restaurant that would survive fierce competition from superior cuisine, lower cost, or more attentive service. Luckily for Ichiban, they have no competition :) So I imagine we will be returning, and I will probably go willingly. read more

The decor is impressive. Quaint and quiet. Definitely a date type place, white linen tablecloths. They started off with oshibori... Hot towels to cleanse your hands with. I wanted basic Chinese food but didn't want styrofoam plates or a buffet. So I went here. I started with Egg Drop Soup, followed by the Sesame Chicken, and dessert was the ultimate chocolate cake (go big or go Home, Right?) Egg drop soup was typical fair. Came with crispy noodles on a plate. Sesame chicken... Loved this because each piece was meat! Not deep fried batter! The sauce was a little sweet for my tasting. Maybe I'll get the general tsos next time. Chocolate cake. Really dense cake as they refrigerate it. Good flavor though. I had three bites and figured I would save the rest for when it thawed out. Overall impressed with the menu and selection. Def wanna try the sushi next. read more

Came here for the buffet - was surprised by the restrictive menu and the terrible staff. Our waitress refused to answer basic questions in regards to the menu because "the buffet menu can't be changed". She was incredibly slow, rude and racist. The way the "buffet" works is that you are seated at a table and given the specialized menu to choose from. Any sushi you order that you don't eat you gotta pay for. When my friend ordered lo mein, she asked for it to be made without meat. The snot nosed waitress stated that only lo mein ordered from the regular menu could be altered. My friend then found chicken in her noodle dish and as a vegetarian asked for compensation. She was told unapologetically that mistakes happen. I found several bones in my sushi & I never had my water filled. I suspect she was trying to dry me out, her pace also made me think she thought my party didn't exisit (it took forever for the food). The price may have been right but the service and the food was absolutely not. read more

I guess since we weren't in a hurry and didn't order sushi, we really enjoyed it. My wife had a bento box, I had ginger beef with leeks, and I was a little stunned at the complexity of the preparation and flavors given the recent reviews. So if you are ok with a more European paced meal and aren't looking for world class sushi, you'll probably have a great meal. read more

Several years ago, my husband and I discovered Ichiban while visiting Williamsburg for the weekend. There was a specialty roll on the menu that almost resembled a "sandwich" cut up and we loved it. Subsequent weekend visits during following years with my children always had us making a beeline for Ichiban, tho the item had disappeared. So this "sandwich" sushi roll we had found years before was BACK on the menu and was one of the first things to come to the table. We had another lighter app and our soup (me) salad (hubby). This roll comes in four sections with about two pieces per section. My husband was ravenous and plowed through half of this "specialty" $15 roll. By the time I was about to eat my second piece, he had commented and i was thinking too "there is a lot of rice" and upon closer inspection, yes - it was a clump of rice with a small piece of asparagus in the middle of another clump of rice with a few shreds of fish on top and tons of sauce. So the last "section" I dissected in front of our server to demonstrate that something must have been missing. She swooped the plate up, I heard a bunch of commotion in a room nearby regarding said plate and quickly had a manager (or owner) at the table declaring that they can't refund this roll because we had eaten too much of it (thanks hungry hubby ha) and hadn't "taken a picture" so she could see what the roll looked like initially (I do need to start taking more food pics, sigh), tho i had pulled it apart in front of the server moments before. ***What was really insulting was I at least wanted the last scraps of fish that we were paying $15 for, I didn't ask to send it back and I NEVER asked for a refund.*** Insults with a smile are such great appetizers. A bigger deal/presumption was made of it than intended - so there went a couple of stars. After this, the rest of our meal (spicy tuna roll, 6 pieces sushi, poke bowl and salmon/avocado roll) was delivered and was quite delicious (Poke Bowl seemed more Chirashi, but i suppose they bank on clientele not knowing the difference. My husband enjoyed it). We bypassed many sushi places in our drive from Va Beach (I love Hayashi in Newport News and Myaki near the outlets where Hayashi used to be years ago ....not to mention several of our favorite spots in VB of Soya, Sapporo and Zushi) and went out of our way to eat at Ichiban before hitting Christmas Town at BG.....out of our way. Will we return? Probably. One day. Will we go out of our way to do so? Nope. read more