One Bite Japanese Grill

One Bite lovers have no fear! Your favorite Japanese bistro isn’t gone — it’s just relocated. And changed its name. The two lovely ladies who own the place definitely want to keep their customers on their toes!
Sama Zama, which is Japanese for varied, is now open in the 400 block of Westport, right next to Jerusalem Café.
You’ll recognize many of your One Bite favorites on the menu, although it is a little less varied than before. Let’s hope the cool new digs attract whole new legions of foodie fans who will undoubtedly encourage the owners to build on their delicious repertoire. I already have it on good authority that the best martini in town — the Emerald Martini — will be back before you can say «agay goro-​goro.»

Bland and boring. I had lunch here and let’s start with the fact that greeter/​waitress didn’t know anything about the menu. The half bite appetizer (shrimp with American cheese fried like a little pancake) was tasteless and uneventful. The shrimp teriyaki was also flavorless. The brown rice actual had more flavor than the shrimp and veggies. The gyoza were burnt and obviously frozen and not made in house. I’d suggest you not waste you money.

I really enjoyed the food, a great place for fresh choices. What you get there, you can’t find anyplace else!
If you want typical «chinese take-​out» this is not it. If you want to experience great food, this is it!

This smart little Japanese café will be closing on November 20 and moving to Westport. It’ll have a different name, but if memory serves it’ll be at 425 Westport Road. They’ll have more space there and a larger menu and I hope they’re successful there!
In its current incarnation, One Bite looks like a chic little Tokyo café, serving Japanese «comfort food.» Many, maybe most, of us tend to think of Japanese food as being very delicate, artistic and ethereal, looking like a painting on the plate. That is one side of Japanese cuisine, but there’s another, less artistic and more home-​y side of Japanese cooking, and that’s what One Bite features. There are hearty noodle dishes, okonomiyaki, and the dish I went in for today, tonkatsu, which is Japan’s version of schnitzel! It’s a large pork cutlet, breaded in panko crumbs and fried until crispy and delicious, served with a slightly sweet-​sour sauce. Definitely hearty and non-​ethereal!
This is a somewhat different style of food than most local Japanese restaurants serve. I’m sorry to lose them from the neighborhood out here in JoCo, but with luck they’ll do well in Westport. Check them out when they open at the end of the month!

I am a huge fan of the new and unique. Maybe Okonomi yaki is on every street corner in Japan, but hey, this is Kansas baby, it’s official… new and unique! My son went to Japan for business and came back singing the praises of Okonomi yaki. So, for that reason alone, I was excited to share his enthusiasm.
The hostess that seated us was very helpful, and lead us through the menu, rife with exotic offerings like… Okonomi yaki and Modan Yaki. These extraordinary dishes were created with familiar ingredients that were prepared and served in very original ways. The Modan Yaki has veggies, soba noodles, and eggs in a crêpe-​like pancake. The cheese bomb Yaki contains veggies, sweet corn, bacon, and cheese. If you are among the many that are just not able to picture it in your mind, that’s OK, I took pictures. Try the combo served with a small salad and chicken Gyoza (pot stickers). Sip a hot cup of Tazo Zen tea to complete the perfect meal.
The dining room is casual and modern, with a long bar and tall chairs perched with a view of the grill. This will enable you to watch the fascinating preparation of your Okonomi yaki. There are also comfy booths for a more intimate dining experience.
Try something new and unique, and amaze your friends with your culinary knowledge of Japanese fast food. Not to mention, be the only one in your neighborhood to be able to properly pronounce Okonomi yaki.

Cheese Bomb Yaki = Heaven in your mouth. Everything about this dining experience was unique. We went here after I read an article on-​line through Channel 41 news about MLB players visiting this restaurant while in town to play the Royals. I had to try this restaurant after that! My friends and I absolutely loved it! They will be moving to the westport area this fall. I expect they will be more busy in the future due to the placement of their location. I highly encourage you all to tantalize your taste buds with this delicious food.

This appears to be a family owned and operated restaurant — Japanese comfort food, with no sushi on the menu. Small, but elegant, the menu offered more choices than the typical steakhouse. We went on Sunday for a late lunch, and ordered for appetizer the tofu and edamame. My old man had a beef/​rice bowl special which resembled pot roast over rice. I had the Mmm Mmm Chicken. It was a platter which had the boneless fried chicken pieces, salad, dumplings and rice. The sauces were remarkable. Brown rice is an option. I look forward to going back for dinner.

We love this place! Great «non-​steakhouse» Japanese food that is as tasty as it is consistent. Gotta love the owner as well — she is young, smart and entrepreneurial — which translates into unique and great food.
Please seek out this business in it’s rather awkward location — Overland Park needs more creative food places like One Bite!

What a surprise to find such a great restaurant in south Kansas City. I can’t wait until I’m in KC again. I’ve been to a lot of Japanese restaurants in NY and wasn’t even half as impressed — this place is amazing!!!
5 STARS

We went here around 7 on a weeknight, there was one other table besides us there. I didn’t even know this place existed until they had a Groupon, hence the reason I went here.
Small, but cool décor. The menu has a decent amount of choices, a lot of fried items, but also a nice array of unique dishes. We split the ribs and a chicken dish. I usually love ribs, but I could barely put down two of them here. I was not a fan of the flavor and they were extremely dry.
Our waitress was nice, I like the intimate, small setting. The food? I was thinking to myself that I’ve cook better dishes that were similar to these at home. Given, I couldn’t recreate a lot of these dishes, but my small representation was not impressive.
I’ll give them a second shot and try a few different things. Yes, I did have the pot stickers, they were good, not great.

I had the Age Goro Goro, Chicken Modan Yaki, One Bite Tonkatsu. The Chicken Modan Yaki, a okonomiyaki, was mushy and lukewarm. Not super, but it was recognizable as a okonomiyaki. The One Bite Tonkatsu was amazing. It was the right texture, right flavor, right thickness. Def in the top 5 tonkatsu-​s I’ve ever had, and that’s including in Japan.
Presentation was lovely.
Age Goro Goro was yummm. The sauces that they had was what made what could have been boring tofu into delicious bites of rainbow. As was with the edamame. I would never have thought to serve it that way.
Wed is authentic night, but since I went on a Tuesday, maybe that’s why the okonomiyaki was substandard.

Interesting place… The dining room is small but nicely kept with a modern diner theme. Okonomiyaki is certainly unique to KC! First time I’ve had it so I don’t really have much to compare it to. Overall, I thought it was good at first but there was way too much going on with the different sauces. The dish’s texture became very mushy once the crispy noodles on top soaked up the sauces. The small chucks of beef were the only definition. This made it quite hard for me to eat about halfway through. Once again, I’m a newbie to yaki but it just seems like the texture shouldn’t have been so mushy. My wife’s shrimp udon was quite average. Maybe even below average because the oil was quite peculiar.
Summary:
* Service was great. Served us well and kept our glasses full
* Okonomiyaki was quite mushy in texture and became hard to eat after a while. Needed some definition to its texture and too much going with the amount of sauces
* Shrimp Udon was average at best
* Unique fusion Asian place for KC
* I give it 3-​stars for its good service and uniqueness

All right, I’m admitting it. I am NOT a petite flower. I am a Big Beautiful Woman. And I like good food. While One Bite caters to the latter statement, it is damned-​near impossible to sit comfortably in this establishment and enjoy said good food. But, they DO have counter seating, which I will try on my next visit. I just won’t order their okonomiyaki.
I just wasn’t impressed by the pasty-​textured, guess-​the-​ingredient Japancake that was put in front of me. Although, I did recognize the overcooked 2 pieces of shrimp, 3 scallops, and 4 – 5 pieces of mystery fish (I think it was supposed to be squid, but squid shouldn’t be mushy — just sayin’). It was drowned in 2 kinds of sauces, one was very mayo-​like, and the other was reminiscent of eel sauce. Hubby told me that okonomiyaki was Japanese street food. Tasted like that’s where mine was cooked. Sorry, just not liking it.
Hubby had veggie okonomiyaki, and he said it was «all right». After 10 years of marriage, I know that means «I won’t order it again».
Our companions had fried rice, which looked good, and one of OB’s «specials» — the drunk’n steak. Now THAT was amazing! Skewers of cubed, marinated steak and won-​ton skin crisps with a delightfully tasty corn salad. He ordered it as a meal, which came with a salad and either white or fried rice or udon. The salad had a creamy wasabimayo dressing on the side, and the udon looked to be done just right.
We also had edamame (salty), gyoza (one bite wonders), and crispy tofu cubes with the wasabimayo dipping sauce. THOSE were to die for! If I could get those with some white rice, I’d be set. Oh, and don’t forget to order the fried raspberry cheesecake bites! 4 little nuggets of yummy.
Just remember, it’s a SMALL place. 5 booths, 2 small tables, and a counter with about a dozen stools that overlook the kitchen. Dinner & a show! Hey! The restaurant was SPOTLESS, our waitress was OUTSTANDING, and she kept our glasses filled.
We’ll go back, but try different dishes while sitting at the counter.

So I have been to a few foodie events where One Bite Japanese Grill has had their Seaweed Salad on sample. I was a little nervous to try it, because I thought «I don’t like seaweed.» To me, it just doesn’t seem like something you should eat. Well, to my surprise it is crunchy and delicious. I am so glad I got up the nerve to try it. The salad is mixed with crunchy noodles and the dressing is the perfect mix of Asian flavors.
I just happened to be over by their location the other day so I thought it would be the perfect time to try it. It was getting close to dinner time and I knew my family was going to be hungry, so I decided to let One Bite do the cooking for me. What a tough decision to decide on what to get. I was glad I needed more than just one meal. After much deliberation I decided on the Ob Cha-​Shu Spare Ribs, Chicken Fried Rice and Inaka Chicken. The chicken came with grilled eggplant drizzled with this tasty sauce called Misomayo. The entrée’s are prepared in an open style kitchen and everything is fresh and made to order.
It is worth the visit. I thought everything was really good!

Only true Japanese comfort food in KC!!! No steak house here!
This is one talented group, love the food, modern presentation, and contemporary décor!

This place might not be five stars if I were a regular visitor to Japan, or if Kansas City had a plethora of competing places to get relatively typical Japanese foods like yaki udon, and okonomiyaki. As it happens, however, I’ve never been to Japan and in Kansas City, Japanese food overwhelmingly means one of two things: sushi, or catching shrimp in your mouth off a teppanyaki. Not to disparage either of those things, but there’s a whole lot more to Japanese food than California rolls and onion volcanoes, and not too many places around here to get it. I’ve seen a few things on menus here and there, e.g., miso soup and tonkatsu, but nowhere else in the city (as far as I know) serves okonomiyaki.
Naturally, I had to try it. On two different visits, I brought along a friend who has lived in Japan to get a better-​informed opinion on One Bite’s similarity to what one might find across the Pacific. The first thing I noticed that seemed a little bit odd was the prevalence of cheese on the menu: cheese in gyoza (yes, it is tasty), cheese in okonomiyaki (there is even one called the Cheese Bomb), cheese on yakitori (One Bite calls it «Chicken Chee»). My friend didn’t seem to think it was all that unusual, though. Shows what I know.
Anyway, the gyoza were tasty if nothing spectacular, and the tonkatsu was the best I’ve had in Kansas City. The okonomiyaki are the star of the show, however. The modan, with a layer of fried noodles between the pancake and egg is, in my opinion, the best, with unspecified «veggies and meat» in the pancake. The meat was pork, but I couldn’t accurately identify all the veggies and I’m fine with that. My friend declared the okonomiyaki to be a little different than what she experienced in Japan, but overwhelmingly very similar. «Mostly,» she said, «it’s the sauce that is different. In Japan, the sauce seemed creamier. Almost more like a mayonnaise.» I’ll take her word for it, at least until I have a chance to visit Japan and try it for myself. Until then, I hereby declare One Bite’s okonomiyaki to be spectacular.
The one complaint I have is that it’s so far out there. Much in the same way that urban KC staples such as Room 39 and Blanc have migrated to the distant reaches of post-​prairie suburbia, I’d like to see some of that lovin’ reversed back across the border in the form of a midtown or plaza One Bite.

One Bite is a case of an awesome restaurant with an extremely unfortunate location. If it were downtown I would be there several times a week. Instead it’s way the hell out in Johnson County, so I only go there when I need my SuperTarget fix.
The interior of this place literally makes me giddy. It’s sleek and modern, but warm and friendly at the same time. I want to live there. Plus the kitchen, which is almost entirely visible from the bar is spotless. Absolutely the cleanest kitchen I’ve seen in the metro area.
The food is pretty awesome, too. I love the seaweed salad. It’s the exact same as what you will get at any sushi restaurant, except it’s mixed with their tasty mayo-​based sauce and topped with crunchy noodles, served in a martini glass. Others point out that this food is readily available in bigger cities for half the cost. Well, that’s a good point except that we are not in those cities and I seriously doubt those places are nearly as awesome inside or staffed by adorable, friendly ladies.
The Okonomoyaki is an incredibly decadent hybrid of noodles and pancake. It sounds insane, but it’s great, especially with seafood. I also really love the Ebi Chili, which comes with shrimp chips, which I am a total sucker for.
Yeah, it’s not sushi, and if you have horrible taste you should definitely avoid this place (hence, why it’s location is incredibly tragic). But if you want a chic, pleasant environment to enjoy some Japanese «Tapas» and have a beer or some tea, this is the spot for you.

Had to do an update here as I have now tried the vast majority of things on the menu.
Awesome: Seaweed salad, Mussels, Ribs, Sapporo
Good: Chicken wings, Ebi Chili
OK: Pork potstickers, Seafood Yaki, Ramune (japanese soda)
NO!!: Beef potstickers; if you eat your potstickers in two bites, you will reveal the interior, bad idea, brown chunk with a piece or two of corn, gross. The «Lollypop», this is why I updated my review, a warning, while scallops and bacon are one of the most delicious combination’s since cheese and fry oil, these are terrible. The culprit; cheap scallops. Good scallops are one of my favorite foods, bad scallops genuinely piss me off.
Still a great place, wonderful trendy feel. Sit at the bar, take your time, be adventurous with your food.

Mixed bag of food. Seawood salad and Gyoza were good, Okonomiyaki, and yaki-​udon were very average. I am fortunate to travel to Japan 6X a year, and it could be much better.
Lastly, I ordered «green tea» and was served something with lemongrass and spearmint.

I know I’m going to get a lot of heat for this but I DON’T CARE.
If you think this is «authentic» you have never eaten Japanese food or lived anywhere outside of the Mid West.
I went here after posting Top 10 Best Restaurants in KC thread on Unilocal «talk» section and someone threw One Bite out there. THIS IS THE REASON WHY I SHOULDN’T TRUST STRANGERS.
You can get this food in any corner of a heavily Asian populated town/​city/​neighborhood in CA for half the price. I’m sorry, how much do you want me to pay for that bland yaki udon? UMM, YOU’RE JOKING, RIGHT? The only reason they are in business is that white people around here do not know what «ethnic» food taste like. I’m sorry but from now on, I WILL NEVER EVER TAKE A RESTAURANT TIP FROM A STRANGER.
What a waste of a good friday night. But hey, I give them credit for serving okonomi-​yaki to caucasians and hence making the illusion of dining at an «authentic» joint. Wow, what a JOKE.