Cafe Hiro

“I would definitely go back.”

While we normally save discussion of each restaurant’s revisiting potential until the end of articles, that quote from our post-meal discussion of Cafe Hiro (aka Café Hiro) merits mention at the start, as it was anything but a foregone conclusion for us. When we think about Italian-Japanese fusion restaurants in Orange County, we immediately focus on Fountain Valley’s excellent Ini Ristorante, which debuted in 2022, and Momonoki, which opened near Ini in mid-2025. Yet Cafe Hiro brought its own take on the concept to Cypress decades earlier – in 2002, when that particular combination of cuisines was far less popular – and has kept thrilling fans (including long-time, trusted OC food writer Edwin Goei) ever since. Even though it took us a long time to visit, we definitely understand its appeal.

Homey and cozy in the way that family-owned Italian restaurants are in some parts of Japan, Cafe Hiro combines wooden chairs, tables, and beams with hand-painted wall art, blue sky-decorated ceilings, and chalked signage spotlighting dinner-exclusive appetizer and entree specials. Table service is just north of casual and very friendly, offering guests a two-sided food menu, a narrower two-sided drink list, and a yellow card promoting a multi-course, family-style meal at a set price. There’s no music, no Ini-like loud din of noise from fellow diners, and no pretense; the restaurant holds perhaps 50 people across a main dining space and a hall-like passage, roughly comparable to Momonoki and decidedly smaller than Ini. A semi-open kitchen is visible from parts of the dining room, but not a focal point of the experience.

There is no single definitive way to blend Italian and Japanese cuisines: Early attempts in Japan were rough (“make it look like those photos”), followed by obsessive efforts to duplicate Italian recipes, and at some point enough mastery that Japanese techniques or ingredients began replacing Italian originals in spiritually equivalent “pastas,” “pizzas,” and “risotto.” Rather than taking one path, Cafe Hiro’s menu offers several – from appetizers ($5 to $18) to salads ($14 to $18) and entrees ($25 to $32), its front side features multiple dishes that might be considered purely Japanese (kara-age chicken, $25), Japanese-American (hamburg steak, $26), or even Chinese-American (Chinese chicken salad, $15; Peking pork, $15; breaded shrimp, $26), while its back includes four risottos (from $32 miso salmon to $37 seared scallops), 10 pastas (from $21 ume shiso to $28 seafood), and nine Japanese-style curries (from $22 mushroom to $30 beef short rib). It’s worth noting that pizza – a must-order attraction at Ini – is, as at Momonoki, nowhere to be found in Cafe Hiro. Five desserts are each $8, so the typical price per guest, before drinks, is likely to be $50 or $60 before tax or tip.

Almost every one of the dishes we ordered was either very good or excellent, with three items – one appetizer, one entree, and one dessert – standing out as our favorites. One of the strongest was Hiro’s scallop carpaccio ($17), a master-level pairing of six raw scallops inside delicate, thin-sliced daikon radish wrappers, each resting in a pool of curry oil and yuzu vinaigrette, with a drop of oba mint on top. The combination of spice, citrus, and mint elevated the light vegetable and seafood flavors in unique ways we haven’t experienced before in carpaccios (fusion or otherwise); our group would gladly have ordered more of these.