First Taste: Oakland omakase and sushi resto Delage raises the curtain on an excellent second act.

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 mog