When Japanese-born chef Chikara Ono first opened Delage in 2016, a 22-seat sliver of an omakase restaurant next door to Swan’s Market in Old Oakland, fourth-generation Japanese American Kyle Itani was still just a young chef exploring his own heritage in the kitchen at Hopscotch, a classic American diner with a Japanese twist.
Delage was Ono’s home away from home, an intimate space he built into one of the most respected omakase restaurants in the East Bay. Even its name—an amalgamation of Ono’s nickname “Dela” and the word for home in the Kyushu dialect, “ge”—was spoken like an invitation among friends: “Delage?” (“wanna go to Ono’s house?”).
Chef Chikara Ono and his Delage successor, chef Kyle Itani(Courtesy of Delage)
Earlier this year, when Ono decided to step away from the restaurant in order to spend more time in Japan, it was one of those friends he called. By then, Kyle Itani was less fresh-faced novitiate than rising Japanese restaurant mogul. Hopscotch had landed him in the good graces of the James Beard Foundation and SF Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer and he’d since opened several other Japanese concepts including Yonsei Handrolls and Itani Ramen in Oakland and Itani Sushi in Berkeley.
In the hands of the Itani Restaurant Group, Ono felt the house he’d built would continue to be a home.
It’s at the ten-seat sushi bar in that tiny abode, an understated space with white subway tile behind the sushi counter and sleek pendant lamps, that I sit down for Delage’s eight-course omakase experience ($140) about a few weeks after opening in September. At its helm is chef Jeremias Jimenez, who partnered with Itani to open Itani Sushi in 2024 after stints at Mujiri, Ozumo, and Yoshi’s.
A carafe of Sohomare Karakuchi sake locked and loaded—a mellow, dry choice from the list of around half a dozen varieties, including Oakland’s Den Sake Brewery’s richly umami Blue Label #6 and grassy, lush Red Label #6—the meal begins with a bullet: a butternut squash dashi with seared iwana, fried sage, and masago arare that’s a delicious, Japanese-style distillation of the season.
The 22-seat Delage with chef Jeremias Jimenez preparing a dish behind the sushi counter(Nicola Parisi)
The courses alternate between three-piece sets of pristine nigiri and complex small plates. Slices of pink ocean trout, pale chikame, and lightly seared black sea bream with glinting scales are followed by sawara tataki, delicately charred hunks of mackerel with shimeji mushrooms and crisp fried garlic in a decadent miso soubise—arguably my favorite dish of the night. Slices of marinated Japanese scallop, white-spotted char, and sweet, white tuskfish are followed by two mini dishes of donburi, one with fatty, melt-in-your-mouth salmon belly, the other with briny uni.
The night’s menu is shaped by the boxes of fish that arrive throughout the week direct from Tokyo’s famous Toyosu Market. Each meal is ichigo ichie—an encounter that happens only once—but chef Jimenez’s creativity and training in traditional Edomae techniques like aging, curing, and marinating make each plate seem as though it’s been tried, tested, and tweaked a thousand times over.
Delage’s omakase menu is a broad avenue for exploring Japanese flavors but it’s not the only road available. At both lunch and dinner, an à la carte menu provides options like nigiri, sets of sashimi, and limited-ingredient maki rolls like negihama (yellowtail and green onion) and ume shiso (Japanese plum and shiso). Mini chirashi bowls consist of raw and smoked fish on cushions of seasoned rice. At lunch Monday through Saturday, they put sets of sashimi, nigiri, and maki together with a small kaiso salad and miso soup for eating in or taking away.
Nigiri and maki at Delage(Nicola Parisi)
A handful of affordable cocktails made primarily with Japanese spirits like Toki whiskey highballs and the Roku gin and plum wine “My Ume Says” are alternatives to sake. There are also rotating selections of white and red wines, as well as draft Asahi beer, yuzu lemonade, and soda.
Back at the counter, the last savory course arrives from the omakase menu, a salty, unctuous toro and Italian sturgeon caviar handroll—a food that’s having a bit of a moment right now—followed by one final punctuation point: a cool, creamy strawberry panna cotta made with vanilla bean and topped with macerated Pajaro Valley berries.
It’s hard to say how exactly chef Ono might have approached these same ingredients, what the ichigo ichie would have been like if he, instead of Jimenez, had been behind the sushi counter. But like a father handing over his business to a son, I can’t help but imagine his pride in what is, already, an excellent second act for the home he once loved.
// Delage is open Monday through Saturday from 11am to 3pm and 5pm to 9pm; 536 9th St. (Oakland), delagesushi.com
Mini donburi with uni and salmon belly(Nicola Parisi)
