Nozomi is in Torrance, a city in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County, but for the purposes of my reviews Los Angeles more or less refers to all of LA County (the San Gabriel Valley isn’t part of the city of Los Angeles either). Torrance has a very large Japanese population, especially as a percentage of the total population. A large part of this stems from Toyota opening its US headquarters there in the late 1960s, followed by other companies. Nissan moved out in 2006 and, more seismically, Toyota announced plans to move to Texas last year. This has doubtless been a big blow to the many businesses that cater to Japanese executives—a clientele that has also driven the high quality of Japanese food in Los Angeles at large. It remains to be seen what the long-term effect will be, or if there’s now going to be a Japanese food renaissance in Plano, Texas (which is where Toyota is going). Continue reading
Tag Archives: Sushi
Kyatchi (Minneapolis)
Kyatchi is a relatively new entrant to the Minneapolis sushi market. It opened just about a year and a half ago and has steadily acquired a strong reputation. When I posted my account of our not-very-good meal at Origami last year a friend recommended it instead; and since then it’s been showing up near the top of many people’s lists. But the same is true of Sushi Fix and I was very far from impressed with my meal there. So, while I’d planned to hit Kyatchi right after that meal, I was a little gun shy. But then I read this interview with Chef Hide Tozawa on City Pages and he seemed to hit all the right notes for me, promising an experience not centered on wacky rolls, unlike at most MSP restaurants (“if you look at my menu, especially sushi, there are no Americanized rolls. I made those things enough in my career in the United States. I want diners at Kyatchi to see what a single ingredient can create if it is done right”); and suggesting that their selection is not limited by their laudable focus on sustainable fish (“Welcome to 21st century transportation. It’s great. You can get whatever you want overnight”). Continue reading
Sushi Fix (Wayzata, MN)
Every time we come back from Los Angeles in the summer I go through sushi withdrawal and begin to think hopefully about sushi in the Twin Cities. I’ve described my prejudices before, in my review of Origami, which, unfortunately, also seemed to see those prejudices confirmed. That experience seemed at the time enough to ward off thoughts of sushi in Minnesota for another 10 years. However, predictably enough, at the conclusion of this summer’s trip I once again began to think about eating sushi here.
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Sasabune (Beverly Hills)
It’s been a bit of a tradition for us to eat lunch at Kiyokawa on our summer trips to L.A. Our first meal there was on our anniversary and even though we’ve always been back a month or so past our anniversary on subsequent trips we’ve always considered it our anniversary meal. Imagine our disappointment then on rolling up to their door three weeks ago and being told that they’re now dinner-only. There was also a sign on the window marking the transfer of their liquor license to a new owner. As the door was open I asked the staff member behind the bar if Satoshi Kiyokawa was still in charge of the food; he assured me he is and that the ownership change hasn’t changed anything else. (I assume this is why they may have left the door open when not in fact open: to reassure people who may ask that Kiyokawa is still Kiyokawa.) A big disappointment for us as it was not possible to eat dinner on this trip (I left the next day and had plans to meet Michael K. for dinner elsewhere that night). Still, if anyone has eaten at Kiyokawa since the change and can reassure me further please write in below. Continue reading
Sushi Sushi (Beverly Hills)
I have a large number of meal reports left from my Los Angeles trip which ended two weeks ago, a number of them of sushi lunches. So as to not give you mercury poisoning from too many sushi meal reports in a row, I’m going to space them out. Here first is a brief account of a lunch omakase at Sushi Sushi in Beverly Hills.
Sushi Sushi is located right off Robertson on Beverly Drive. While there are some who praise it highly, it’s not really in the upper echelons of Los Angeles’ sushi scene; but we can’t afford to eat only at that level. As it happens, we liked our meal fine but it had the unexpected effect of making us appreciate all the more our more expensive omakase at Sushi Tsujita. Continue reading
Sushi Tsujita (Los Angeles, July 2015)
Tsujita, the famous Los Angeles ramen and noodle specialists, opened four years or so ago, taking the city by storm just as the ramen craze was beginning to crest in the US. A branch of an apparently well-respected Tokyo restaurant, it has set the standard for ramen in Los Angeles (and its own branch, Tsujita Annex, opened down the street on Sawtelle not too long after). And it’s not just American ramen enthusiasts who raved about it: a few years ago when we asked Satoshi Kiyokawa (of the eponymous Kiyokawa) where he likes to eat Japanese food when he’s not in his own restaurant, he said unhesitatingly that Tsujita was the place for him. Continue reading
Kiriko (Los Angeles, Winter 2014/2015)
Kiriko, as I’ve said before, has one of the best lunch deals on the planet: miso soup, salad, 10 pieces of quality nigiri plus one handroll, served omakase-style for $46/head. It is true Shunji’s lunch special offers a couple more pieces but I’ll reiterate that I think Kiriko’s is a better deal anyway, as you get better fish. The only problem is that it’s not served to solo diners (but maybe you could just order two?).
We eat this lunch special at least once on every summer trip but I don’t write up every meal as the selection is seasonal and so doesn’t change so much from meal to meal. However, our most recent trip was at the end of December and so here’s an account of what we ate.
Shunji, Dinner Omakase (Los Angeles, Winter 2014/2015)
We were in Los Angeles for a little short of two weeks at the end of December and early January and, as usual, ate somewhat excessively. Reports on most of those meals will show up on the blog over the next month or so, though not in sequence. First up is the meal we were looking forward to the most: dinner at Shunji.
Shunji opened a little less than three years ago and in pretty short order rocketed to near the top of Los Angeles’s sushi scene (probably the best in the United States); most of the cognoscenti rank it in the tier below Urasawa (a restaurant I am unlikely to eat at in the foreseeable future). We ate their lunch special “omakase” this summer and while it was good we were not blown away (we both thought Kiriko’s lunch special, on this trip and previous, was far superior). When I said as much on Chowhound’s Los Angeles forum a lot of people insisted that the measure of Shunji cannot be taken without doing their full-on dinner omakase. Frankly, based on the nature of some of the conversation, I think there’s a bit of “Shunji’ism” at play on the Chowhound LA forum, but the point was well-taken and so we resolved to do the full omakase on this trip. And so we did. And it was a very good meal. But, again, it didn’t rise to the level of a transcendental experience—more on this below.
Origami (Minneapolis)
For years I’ve been down on sushi in Minnesota, all the while harbouring a guilty secret: I hadn’t actually eaten at any of the better reviewed places. It just seemed highly unlikely to me that sushi at any of these places would be any good. No, I didn’t think this because we’re in the middle of the country. Given how much fish flies around the world and how much of what shows up in most sushi places in the US is previously frozen anyway that’s not the problem. Which is not to say that it wouldn’t be nice to get live Santa Barbara uni and spot prawns as you can in the better places in LA (for example, at Kiyokawa) but there’s plenty of other good fish that should be theoretically available. To be clear, I wouldn’t under any circumstances expect there to be sushi bars here on par with the top or second-tier places in Los Angeles but theoretically, at least, one might expect there to be places on par with the better neighbourhood establishments in LA. But I didn’t think this was likely either. Continue reading
Kiyokawa (Los Angeles, July/August 2014)
We’ve been going to Kiyokawa to celebrate our wedding anniversary for a few years now. It’s true that we already ate an excellent celebratory dinner this year at Piccolo (in Minneapolis) but tradition is not something to be messed with. Therefore after a pretty good but not particularly exciting lunch at Shunji earlier this trip we repaired to Kiyokawa last week for what turned out to be a pretty epic sushi omakase.
There are a number of things that distinguish Kiyokawa from their peers in the upper echelons of the Los Angeles sushi scene. There’s the whimsical approach to platings (seen most clearly in their kaiseki omakase meals); their live sea urchin; being open on Mondays; the ageless Satoshi Kiyokawa’s friendly and relaxed demeanour etc.. The one that I want to note here though is that their menu clearly lists the price of their omakase and what you are going to get for it. This summer the price for the sushi omakase at lunch is $120 and you are told that you will get 18 pieces of nigiri plus a handroll plus two desserts. This is in stark contrast to pretty much every other place where to opt for the “market price” omakase is to not really know how much you will get till the meal is done, or how much you will pay till the check arrives—which is fine for very wealthy people to whom money is no object, but a little intimidating for middle class people making the occasional splurge. So I appreciate it.
Shunji (Los Angeles, July/August 2014)
Shunji has been making some waves in the Los Angeles sushi scene for the last couple of years. It has a highly unlikely location: in the refurbished Chili Bowl/Mr. Cecil’s on Pico/Wellesley in West L.a, in the shadow of the Santa Monica freeway, right next to a hardware store and across from an adult bookstore. It’s quite nice on the redone inside though, and the owner/head chef, Shunji Nakao has some serious cred: he was one of the original chefs at Matsuhisa in its heyday and previously helmed Asanebo. His eponymous Shunji is an altogether more modest affair: a two-chef counter with not much room to spare, some tables and a very distinctly non-Temple of Sushi vibe. Continue reading
Kiyokawa (Los Angeles, Summer 2013)
We’ve had two excellent meals at Kiyokawa in the past–one the full chef’s omakase lunch, with kaiseki style cooked items along with sashimi and sushi, and the other an exquisite sushi omakase. And so, as good as our regular lunch omakase at Kiriko was, and as much as it suggested that their omakase of comparable cost could give Kiyokawa a run for his money, we chose to return to Kiyokawa for our 10th anniversary lunch (we’re travelling with our young boys and have neither the ability nor energy to go out to dinner). Continue reading
Kiriko (Los Angeles, Summer 2013)
Sushi is not like whisky…. “Why, thank you, Captain Obvious,” you say, “one comes from a bottle and one comes from fish and other things wot live in the sea”. Well, first of all, whisky sometimes comes in a can, and secondly, imaginary interlocutor, if you’d let me finish, I was going to go on to say that unlike with whisky, the quality of sushi is very strongly correlated with price and once you’ve gone up the quality ladder it is very hard to level down; which makes good sushi a little harder on the wallet than good whisky. Continue reading