Issei's exterior is almost too picture perfect. The entrance is overhung with thatched eaves. A large white lantern dangles above a complex flower arrangement, and an indigo noren stretches across the rustic sliding wooden door.
It's a facade, of course. Issei is built into the ground floor of a commercial building erected little more than a decade ago in a quiet neighborhood well off the trendy drag in Ebisu. But it puts you into exactly the right frame of heightened receptivity for appreciating the excellent ryori served here.
A dozen chairs are set out along an L-shaped wooden counter so well scrubbed it's almost bleached. At the rear is a small square table for latecomers, big enough to accommodate eight at a pinch, though only if everyone is friends. The patina is accruing nicely on the paneling of the walls. The diminutive kitchen area is spotless.