To dine in North Texas’ first restaurant dedicated to kaiseki—a multicourse hyper-seasonal affair and the pinnacle of Japanese haute cuisine—you’re going to have to leave Dallas. You’re going to have to venture to Plano, and not even downtown Plano. In a strip mall just south of Stonebriar, Ichika sits nestled between a bubble tea shop and a CPAP Express. Inside the restaurant, gentle piano music pipes through the speakers. Eight curved seats line a single counter. The decor is all clean lines and pale wood. Even the lone art piece on the wall is spare, geometric, and wooden. When the first bottle of sake arrives, so does a tray full of hand-crafted glass cups, each with its own unique design, so every diner can choose his or her favorite.
Ichika, the latest venture of half-Korean, half-Okinawan chef Leo Kekoa, is a bold departure from other Japanese restaurants in North Texas, most of which sling sushi or ramen, and some of which spare no expense on krab, mayo, boxed tempura batter, and supermarket cream cheese. Although Kekoa and head chef Chikao Kikuchi (formerly of Sushi on McKinney and Edoko) source Texas oranges and Texas wagyu, the majority of their ingredients come from Japan, and nothing has been manufactured in the Western world. In other words, no mayo, heavy sauces, or refined sugar will grace this counter. Nothing in the restaurant, edible or decorative, comes in colors that don’t exist in nature. Each of the eight courses showcases seasonal ingredients in five preparations: raw, steamed, grilled, fried, and cured.
45-year-old Kekoa, who grew up working in his grandfather’s Honolulu sushi restaurant, moved to Dallas in 2012 to cook at Nobu, where he stayed for a decade. “Nobu is the Harvard of the sushi world,” Kekoa says. “Harvard doesn’t teach you how to be smart, but it does make you part of a lineage.” His lineage includes his friend Shine Tamaoki, who left Nobu Dallas around the same time he did to open Pearl, and Kang Mingoo, whose Seoul restaurant Mingles recently earned its third Michelin star. “I’m very proud of Kang Mingoo,” Kekoa says. “He started out like us. No investors.” In 2022, Kekoa opened the omakase restaurant Kinzo in Frisco, and in late 2025, he and his wife opened a more casual sushi spot, Hinoki, also in Frisco…