Restaurant review: A very Japanese welcome in the north of Wicklow

Hasu Isakaya in Greystones is a casual but enticing dining experience, just the thing to banish after-work ennui

Hasu Izakaya Restaurant in Greystones, Co Wicklow: an izakaya is ‘a sort of hybrid’ between a pub and a restaurant, ‘like a gastropub’. Picture: Fergal Phillips

Hasu Isakaya

Church Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow

01-2533483, hasuisakaya.ie

The Japanophile in the house is cock-a-hoop: one of his favourite types of eatery has opened in the town where we live. It’s an izakaya, which he says we don’t really have in Ireland. It’s “a sort of hybrid” between a pub and a restaurant, and “like a gastropub”, he tells me.

“Izakayas tend to be super-casual, the kind of place workers go to relax, have ...