Recent Eats: Shabu Hyang

Old timers might remember when this was a food blog. Well, it's still called Recent Eats, and I still eat plenty, so I thought I'd get back into the habit of sharing some of my food finds. Lately, I've been enjoying the shabu shabu at Shabu Hyang at the corner of Wilshire and Western.

At Shabu Hyang, you can choose between regular and spicy broth or get  a half and half order which comes with a partitioned bowl to separate the broth. There are two basic orders. One is the traditional shabu shabu with huge cabbage and chard leaves, various mushrooms, bean sprouts and fish cake. The other is a spring roll which comes with rice paper wrappers assorted veggie toppings. Both come with beautifully marbled beef and a variety of sauces.  If you're there with a group, get both traditional and spring roll for maximum variety.

Noodles & Rice cooked in the shabu broth.

Once your done with the shabu shabu, there is a noodle course and a rice porridge, both cooked in the same broth and with whatever meat and veggie odds and ends are left in your dish.  The rice porridge is great, particularly if cooked in the spicy broth. It's a mix of rice, seaweed, pumpkin and egg.  A lovely end to the meal.






 
Shabu Hyang
3807 Wilshire Blvd., #120
Los Angeles, CA  90010
(213) 384-5464

And if you're interested in more of my recent eats, I've reactivate an old Instagram account and plan to use it mostly for food pics. My Twitter will remain spirits focused.

Going Wako for Fried Pork: Wako Donkasu

It just so happened that while I was on a fried pork binge (albeit a Oaxacan one), Jonathan Gold published a review of a Koreatown tonkatsu restaurant. I'm a big fan of tonkatsu, the Japanese, panko breaded, deep fried pork cutlet. The stuff is ubiquitous here in Koreatown, but most of it is sub-par - tough, dry meat, fried to death and buried in goopy sauce. But not so Wako Donkasu.

Wako Donkasu, on Olympic a few blocks east of Normandie, is a mostly Japanese style donkatsu. The only trace of Korean cuisine are two very small but very good panchan: a tangy radish kimchi and a wonderfully garlicky dish of sliced, pickled jalapeños.

The pork is tender and juicy with a light, crispy crust. For the sauce, you are initially given a bowl of freshly roasted sesame seeds with a wooden pestle to pulverize them with. The waiter then dumps the sauce on top and you mix the sesame seeds throughout, which gives the sweet and fruity (but not overly gloppy) sauce a nice nutty fragrance.

We also tried the fried New York strip which was also excellent. It was fried just as carefully as the pork but packed in even more flavor and had better contrast when combined with the sauce.

The combo comes with a fried protein (pork, beef or chicken), a pile of cabbage salad, soba noodles, a fried shrimp and a fried potato ball (think fried mashed potatoes). The soba was fine, but nothing special. The things to get here are the fried meats.

This place is dangerously close to where I work and live. I see lots of fried pork in my future.


Wako Donkasu
2904 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(213) 387-9256

Porkin' it Up at Ramen Jinya

I was pretty skeptical of Ramen Jinya when I strode up to this ramen spot that shares space with Marshall's in a Studio City strip mall. I'm used to the frenetic pace and jockeying that comes with ramen at Daikokuya or the Japanese food court aesthetic of Santouka. Instead, Jinya is a bright, modern space with menu items that include California rolls and something called a LaBrea roll.

As is tradition, we started with gyoza, which were nicely fried and flavorful, though not as good as the big, overstuffed dumplings from Daikokuya.

Then came the ramen, I tried for the super-porky hakata, but at 6:00 on a Saturday, they were already out, so I went for the basic tonkotsu ramen with "half cooked" egg.

With the first sip of porky goodness, all of my preconceptions melted away. The broth was truly a thing of beauty, more purely porky than any other ramen I've had in LA. It was bursting with flavor. The other elements: scallions, cha siu and noodles, were all good, but the broth was the star here. I couldn't get enough of it. The half cooked egg, a ramen favorite of mine, is an add-on, but one you should definitely get. The yolk is soft but not runny and the outer egg is pleasingly salty; it blends right in with the ramen.

I put my head down and spooned and slurped, not looking up until I was done. The only thing I was left wondering was if this is the regular broth, what is the hakata like?

I will be back.

Ramen Jinya
11239 Ventura Blvd
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 980-3977

Merry Christmas Sushi!

Usually I celebrate Jewish Christmas in the traditional fashion at a Chinese restaurant, but this year we decided to eat in with a lovely sashimi selection from Marukai Market in Gardena. Buy big hunks of fish and for an extra $5, they will cut it sashimi style for you and garnish it. There are a number of Marukai Markets but the Gardena branch is larger and has a wider variety of sashimi grade fish.

The star here was the uni, which was among the freshest tasting I've had...creamy, uni goodness. Also pictured, top left, the Market's locally made fresh sukui tofu which is great with a little Maldon Salt sprinkled on top.

Happy Holidays!

Marukai Market
1740 W. Artesia Blvd
Gardena, CA 90248
(310) 660-6300

RIP Tokyo-77

It's sad to have two RIP posts in one week. Tokyo-77 is a tiny Culver City diner hidden away off an alley. While I poked my head into the shop a few times, I never ate there, and my understanding was that it was known more for its old-school, funky ambiance than its food, but I did want to draw attention to this lovely
remembrance by Ken Tanaka (whose picture I used above).

Tanaka, who was somewhat of a regular there, apparently foresaw the closing of Tokyo-77 in a dream:

I had not been to Tokyo 77 for many months, then a week ago I had a dream that Tokyo 77 was closing. Two days later, I took my friend Polo there for breakfast. There was a sign on the door saying " After 30 years, We are Closing. December 18th will be our last day."

It was just like in my dream. I have never had a dream that comes true before. I have had dreams about flying bears, and monkey cats who become friends and let me ride on their backs through the starry skies and together we eat juicy sweat Magalore Fruits. But those dreams didn't come true. I wish this dream hadn't come true either. I will miss Tokyo 77 very much.
Tonight I will try to dream that they are not really closing and that it was just a joke. Maybe that dream will also come true.

RIP Tokyo-77, maybe it will be replaced by a restaurant that serves monkey cats with magalore fruits.

Soup is Good Food - My Favorite LA Soups

As the air finally begins to develop something akin to a chill, for Southern California at least, my thoughts turn to soup. Soup is a comfort food in nearly every culture; perhaps the warm, wetness appeals to our desire to return to the womb and feast, once again, on amniotic fluid from the one time in our lives when we lacked any literal independence and were totally and completely dependent on the care of others. Or maybe it's just warm and tasty.

In no particular order, then, come a few of my favorite LA area soups.


Seolleongtang with beef tongue at Hanbat Shul-Lung-Tang. Like Pho Minh's pho, the broth is the essence of beef, though this time, it's beef bones, oxtail to be precise. The murky, milky broth shows the presence of stewed bones and reaches out to comfort every extremity. The tongue is sliced so thinly and is so tender that you might think you are eating ultra-thin strips of filet mignon. This may be the best of the cold-day soups on the list.

Ajiaco at La Fonda Antioqueña. Made from specially imported potatoes and only available on weekends, ajiaco is a Colombian chicken and potato soup in a rich, corn broth. The rich, yellow broth yields flavors of corn and chicken fat and puts the rest of the ingredients to shame, making you wonder why they are; even there. This may be the most delicious broth on the list; it's hard to stop eating.

Pho at Pho Minh. There are thousands of phos throughout the Southland, but none that I've tasted is as intrinsically beefy as Pho Minh's. The broth is so full bodies and representative of beef, that I hesitate to add any of the traditional condiments lest they interfere with that broth. Unlike the beef bone broth at Hanbat, this broth is the essence of the meat, the cow, simmered for God knows how long to wrest every last bit of flavor and present a liquid composition of meat.

Napa Soup with Lamb and Hand Cut Noodles at Dumpling Master. It's tangy, sour and gamey, filled with cabbage, boiled lamb, a good dose of vinegar and chewy, hand cut noodles. This funky Northern Chinese soup is one of my go-to soups and seems like it should cure hangovers, improve virility or have some other mystical effect.

Cream of Corn at La Cabanita. Given how much I love cream soups, it's odd that this is the only one on the list. I just haven't been excited about that many creamed soups in LA. La Cabanita's cream of corn, however, is velvety smooth, sweet and corny. It's topped with crumbled Mexican cheese, which gives it just the right amount of added salt. La Cabanita has a number of excellent soups, but the cream of corn is my favorite.

Bean Paste Casserole at Seongbukdong. The funk continues at this home style Korean restaurant with the bean paste casserole. Not a casserole at all, in the way westerners conceptualize of such a thing, this is a chewy, salty fermented soy bean soup. It tastes like eating an entire bowl of slightly diluted doenjang, the fermented soy bean mash served as a condiment to Korean BBQ. Since it's all I can do not to eat doenjang of the condiment tray with a spoon, this casserole suits me just fine.

Ramen. I'm no Rameniac, but I like a good bowl of ramen, and I go back and forth between whether the ramen is better at Daikokuya in Little Tokyo or Santouka in the Mitsuwa Marketplace. I have a porky soft spot for both Santouka's fatty broth and the pure porky goodness of Daikokuya.

There are other soups I love, but don't have a great example of in LA. Lobster bisque is one of my favorites (are there any Hamburger Hamlets left?). I'm a huge fan of vichyssoise, but I really like my own version the best and besides, it doesn't really count as a cold weather comfort food. And Hawaiian chicken long rice from Ono Hawaiian in Honolulu always deserves a shout out. Then there is Laksa and...well, I could go on.

What are your favorite LA soups?

Rousing Roe: Al Bap at A-Won

In the heat of LA in the summer, I look for the cooler things in life. In Koreatown that means one of the various cold soups, bi bim bop or al bap at A-Won, a Korean-Japanese sushi restaurant on Western. Al-bap is similar to bi bim bap except that instead of meats and veggies, it is made with seaweed and roe. There are at least five types of roe topping an A-Won al bap bowl, including uni, salmon eggs, smelt roe and other roe in hues of green, red and yellow as well as a small, triangular slice of omelet (continuing the egg theme). The mixture of the rice, seaweed and roe creates a salty, fishy, bite that pops in your mouth as you bite down on the various eggs (fish roe - the original pop rocks). A creamy slab of uni is the cherry on top of this rousing roe.

So on a hot day, stop into Al Bap for a roe break.

A-Won
913 S. Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(213) 389-6764

Top Ramen: Daikokuya

There are a number of established, vaunted LA institutions to which I have shamefully never been. I've never had Welsh rarebit and a tableside Caesar salad at Musso & Frank's Grill, I've never had a reuben and Brent's Deli and I've never had a bowl of chili at Chili My Soul. Until recently, I had never sat down to a bowl of ramen at Daikokuya, the Little Tokyo ramen temple with additional locations in Costa Mesa and Monterey Park. I am happy to say I have now remedied that sad situation.

The Daikokuya ramen bowl is truly a thing of beauty. As I slurped, I debated whether the rich, murky brown, intensely porky broth even qualified as a soup as opposed to a gravy or jus. The broth dominates the dish, as it should, making the nicely chewy noodles almost an afterthought. One of the unexpected delights of the ramen is a hard boiled egg, so saturated with broth that it tastes almost like a pork product. As I ate the porky egg, I thought of a Dr. Seuss-like egg laying pig.

The Daikokuya ramen pairs well with a side of salmon roe on rice (available together as a combination) and an order of gyoza. Being a porketarian, I ordered the pork cutlet with my ramen. The cutlet was probably the meal's only weakness. It was very eggy. The sauce was a bit too sweet, and it made the crispy, fried coating soggy.

My favorite ramen in LA is at Santoka Ramen at the Mitsuwa Market in West LA, so that is what I naturally compared Daikokuya to, though I did not do a side by side comparison. The broth at Santoka is also wonderful, but a bit more greasy than Daikokuya's. The actual pork slices in the ramen are better at Santoka. At Daikokuya, they were flimsy and seemed to be more of a flavoring agent than an actual element of the meal. It would definitely be a close call between these two great ramens; we will have to set a date for a ramen-off.

I always feel like something sweet after eating a lot of pork, and after poking around at the Little Tokyo Mall, across the street from Daikokuya, we found a little, generic-looking ice cream parlor that serves Fossleman's ice cream. A scoop of Fossleman's taro ice cream was a perfect end to the meal.

Daikokuya
327 E. First Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 626-1680

Holy Mackeral: Aburi Saba at Musha

LA is in about year five of a massive gastro-pub fad. A gastro-pub, of course is a bar offering excellent eats. The fad blew in with Father's Office in Santa Monica, famously doling out burgers and sweet potato fries along with their large selection of brew.

The izakaya is the Japanese version of the gastro-pub, which accompanies your drinks with tapas-sized plates of fish, tofu and other Japanese and Japanese-Western fusion dishes. The LA izakaya fad came in on the heels of the gastro-pub fad and both remain strong.

Musha was one of the early izakaya in Torrance which then expanded to Santa Monica. I headed to the Santa Monica branch and was not disappointed.

There was so much good food at Musha that it's hard to know where to start. Thin strips of beef tongue, Korean BBQ style with a sesame oils sauce were beautifully beefy and lacked any of the negative textures I associate with tongue. MFC (Musha Fried Chicken) had a light, crunchy batter and a tangy (yuzu?) sauce. Anago rice was served out of a hot pot that created a mash-up similar to bi bim bop dol sot. There was even a tribute to Father's Office in the sweet potato fries with ranch dressing, though they weren't as good as the spectacular FO fries.

But my favorite dish was the aburi saba, or flamed mackerel, a side of mackerel seared table-side with a blow-torch. Mackerel, in my experience, is a risky order. Handle it poorly and it becomes oily and develops a strong fishy order, but fresh, well-handled mackerel is something to behold. This mackerel was fresh and firm with a wonderfully subtle taste; the skin-side was seared but the bottom of the fillet remained cold. The flavor was strong without being fishy. Certainly one of the best mackerel dishes I recall having anywhere.

The desserts at Musha were also notable. Their selection is a mix of preprepared dessert from a distributor and desserts made especially for Musha by a pastry chef who apparently goes only by the name Carolyn (you know, like Cher or Madonna). We stuck with the specially made desserts (tiramisu, apple tartin, creme brulee and chocolate souffle), which were quite good, though only the creme brulee was exceptional--thick and creamy with an excellent custard flavor. Creme brulee may be ubiquitous, but it's still surprisingly hard to find a great one, so I'm always happy when I do...and both the brulee and the apple tartin are torched table side, a la the mackerel (okay, so these guys are a bit pyromaniacal).

Prices on the dishes are pretty reasonable. Most things we ordered ranged from $6 to $8, but as with any small plates establishment, they add up quickly.

Musha
424 Wilshire Blvd. (just east of the Third Street Promenade)
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 576-6330

Hawaii Journal Day 8: Sunday Brunch

Day 8: Sunday

Brunch: Prince Court at the Hawaii Prince Hotel



One of the things I like to do on vacation is go to a Sunday brunch buffet. I'm usually not a buffet-fan, but I like the selection of sweet and savory. On Oahu, the universally acclaimed best brunch is the Orchid Restaurant at the Halekulani Hotel, but Orchid is expensive ($50 per person) and it is hard to get reservations.

My alternative choice for brunch is the Prince Court at the Hawaii Prince Hotel. It serves a diverse selection highlighting both traditional brunch foods and Hawaii's native and Asian influenced cuisine. Surprisingly, for a hotel brunch spot, the crowd is heavily local (mostly there for special occasions), and it has a nice view of the harbor below. In addition, the Prince Court is easier on the wallet ($35 per person) and while you still need reservations, you can usually get them by calling a week in advance.

This year's Prince Court Buffet featured hot and cold buffets as well as stations for sushi, omelettes, prime rib, saimin and dessert. Highlights were two excellent pokes (ahi and tako), a very good Korean barbecued kalbi and sushi rolls made to order. Among the desserts, there was excellent bread pudding and a good coconut haupia cake. My favorite dessert, though, was the macadamia nut cream pie. It had a shortbread crust with a caramel and mac nut center and was topped with chocolate and then whipped cream. Usually, a hotel buffet contains competent versions of a standard repertoire of desserts, but the mac nut cream pie stood on its own.

Prince Court
Hawaii Prince Hotel Waikiki
100 Holomoana St.
Honolulu, HI
Make Reservations: (808) 944-4494


Dinner: Tokkuri Tei



After a huge lunch, we opted for sushi for dinner from Tokkuri Tei, a Kapahulu joint with a menu featuring not just sushi but a variety of hot dishes as well. They also offered a dish intriguingly called the Baked Alaska Roll. Still being fairly stuffed, we opted for a pretty standard sushi dinner. The stand out was definitely the toro. It was a fattier cut of fatty tuna than I'd ever had before, literally melting in your mouth. Unfortunately, the uni was off, and that left a literal bad taste in my mouth.

Tokkuri Tei
611 Kapahulu Ave.
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808) 739-2800

Tomorrow: Dim Sum and More

Hawaii Journal Day 7: The Side Street Inn Fried Pork Chop

Day 7: Saturday

Lunch: Sanoya Ramen

We were feeling like ramen for lunch so we headed to Sanoya, a small joint with a sign touting handmade noodles. Pork ramen came in a rich, ultra-fatty pork stock. The noodles were nice and chewy. Yakisoba was a bit too charred and had a burnt, carbony taste which I didn't like. Gyoza, though, were quite nice.

Ramen is one of those things where I've never found anything in Hawaii better than we can get at the best places in LA, but we keep searching.

1785 S King St, #4
Honolulu, HI 96826
(808) 947-6065


Dinner: Side Street Inn

A few years ago, when I first visited the Side Street Inn, it was sort of a local secret. A typical plate lunch service by day, at night, it turned into a bar with amazing food that attracted some of Hawaii's greatest chefs after hours. It was bar food with a Hawaiian twist. Lilikoi basted spare ribs, fried rice and a marvelous fried, breaded pork chop. Well, the jig is up. Side Street Inn is officially on the map, at least the foodie tourist map. It's in Frommer's, Anthony Bourdain went there on his Travel Channel Show, and so on and so forth. The good news is that none of this has affected the food or atmosphere at Side Street.

Literally housed on a side street, a semi-industrial strip of Hopaka with no parking whatsoever (park at the east side of the Ala Moana Shopping Center), Side Street is a great little place. The fried pork chop is all it's chopped up to be, a well seasoned, breaded chop served sliced on the bone. Compared to yesterday's Japanese tonkatsu, a pounded piece of cutlet, the Side Street pork retains more of its natural pork flavor; it's less about fried and more about pork.

Side Street also dishes out excellent yakisoba, served with pink strips of char siu and fish cake and topped with cilantro.

One of the things I look forward to most at Side Street is the fried rice, probably the best I've ever had. It's cooked with bacon and has big pieces of sausage mixed throughout. All of this, of course, pairs well with cold beer, as it should be. It may no longer be a hip secret, but it's still a great meal.

Side Street Inn
1225 Hopaka
Honolulu, HI
(808) 591-0253

Tomorrow: Sunday Brunch

Hawaii Journal Day 6: Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam (and Pork)

Day 6: Friday

Breakfast: Ode on a Spam Musubi

Oh, to embrace the salt and the pork,
With a pillow of rice and a casing in nori,
I run from Okazuya with plastic spork,
To bask in your wondrous canned pig glory.

The glistening skin sweating with soy,
beckons me from the glass case at Seven Eleven,
I yearn to embrace your fatty pig-joy,
And ascend into Monosodium Glutamate heaven.

Some turn askance and say they can't love you,
You're just an amalgam of stray hooves and snouts,
But I say there is none that can stand above you,
The island breakfast treat, I cannot live without.

Every vacation, I run around eating Spam musubis. In the past, some of my favorites have been Caryn's Okazuya and those carried by the supermarket in Haleiwa. This year, I tried musubi at the ABC Store (Waikiki), Diamond Head Market (Spam and Egg), Fukuya Deli (2710 S. King St.) and Gulick Deli (1512 Gulick Ave.). Of those four, my favorite was Fukuya, which had well seasoned Spam and a good rice/Spam/nori balance.


Lunch: Gyotaku



We grabbed bento box lunches from the Gotaku Japanese restaurant. Highlights included mochiko (fried) chicken (top left) and a nicely spiced, if a bit dry, salmon (top right). A solid, if not thrilling, take out lunch.


Dinner: Tonkatsu Ginza Bairin

For dinner, we decided to continue our porcine theme with some tonkatsu, Japanese deep fried, breaded pork cutlet. Tonkatsu Ginza Bairin is a new, local branch of a small Japanese chain (three stores in Japan, one on Waikiki). The highlight was the pork tenderloin katsu. A tender, lean cut of pork tenderloin, panko breaded and double fried to crispy perfection. Dab it in Ginza Bairin's home brewed dipping sauce and enjoy. The traditional gin-katsu, pork loin, is a bit more fatty and less tender than the tenderloin. We started with some similarly fried oysters and also got a serving of the enormous fried shrimp which were nearly the size of corn dogs.

Yet another porky sensation in Hawaii, though at a price. The pork entrees, which include miso soup, pickles and rice, run from $15 to $20 and $32 for the special Kurobuta Pork loin, which we did not try.

Tonkatsu Ginza Bairin
255 Beach Walk
Honolulu, HI 96815
(808) 926-8082

Tomorrow: Side Street Inn

Kids Eat the Darndest Things

As a proud father of two and a committed eater, I've never been one to let kids cramp my eating style. Between loving to eat and not wanting to pay for babysitting, we started taking our older daughter (now 6) out with us almost everywhere we went. It may seem silly to some to take a three year old (her age at the time) to Valentino, but it's actually a lot cheaper than babysitting.

Between going out with us and living in a the multi-cultural world of Koreatown (kim bap is her favorite lunch snack), our daughter has developed quite the palate (our younger one is still an infant so her tastes are limited to strained this and that). At age six, she regularly eats things that I hadn't even heard of until I was in college.

She's wanted to be on the blog for a while, so I told her to come up with her top ten favorite restaurants in LA. The initial comments are hers, while the bracketed comments are mine.


1. NBC Seafood
404 S Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA 91754-3279
(626) 282-2323

1. Ocean Star
404 S Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA 91754-3279
(626) 282-2323

You can try something sweet or something savory and you can always experiment if you see something that looks good. And the other thing is that you get to taste millions of delicious things without getting too full.
Favorite Dishes: Pork Buns, Cream Buns.

[There is probably no more kid friendly type of cuisine than dim sum. The palaces are chock full of kidlets of all sizes and so loud that a child could have a screaming tantrum and no one would notice. Plus the cart service makes for a fun time. I prefer NBC, but she couldn't decide between there and Ocean Star and so made it a tie.]


3. El Torito Grill
9595 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310)550-1599

I like seeing the fresh tortillas being made.
Favorite Dishes: taquitos, spare ribs, steak nachos, quesadillas, corn cake.

[I've had to come to terms with my daughter's love of this southwestern incarnation of the El Torito chain in Beverly Hills. I order one of the weak margaritas, generously butter my tortillas and do my best. Over time, I've even come to like the little blue shrimp taquitos.]


4. Mastro’s Steakhouse
246 N Canon Dr
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310)888-8782

I like the Macaroni & cheese…the creaminess, the cheesiness and the deliciousness. And I like to get bites of other people’s meat.

[We only took her here once for a big family birthday, but she immediately took to it and has been bugging us to take her back ever since.]


5. Atlacatl
301 N. Berendo St.
Los Angeles, CA
(323) 663-1404

I like the turkey sandwiches [pan con pavo]. I like the moistness of the bread of the juice the turkey is dipped in and the yummy hot turkey.

[Atlacatl is not my favorite Salvadoran place, but it's close and also kid-friendly.]


6. Yai on Vermont
1627 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 644-1076

Favorite Dishes: Pad See Ew with pork or chicken. Roasted Pork with Chinese Broccoli.
What she likes about them: The noodleyness and the porkyness.

[Kids and noodles of any ethnicity, a match made in heaven].


7. La Pupusa Loca
5716 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90038
(323) 957-2967

Favorite Dishes: Pupusa Revuleta [pork, cheese and beans].
I like the yumminess of the pork and tortilla mixed together.


8. Noshi Sushi
4430 Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90004-1802
Phone: (323) 469-3458

Favorite Dishes: Tamago (Egg sushi), Unagi sushi and rolls. I like seeing the things made.

[This is a popular neighborhood joint on Beverly Boulevard. The prices are right but the sushi is pretty basic. I'm not sure what makes it a huge draw with a line on most weekends. This was actually her birthday dinner choice for the last two years.]


9. Fassica
10401 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 815-8463

I like the injera’s texture, like kind of doughy and mushy, kind of. I love eating with my fingers.
Favorite Dishes: The Fassica Special.

[She immediately took a liking to Ethiopian. Like she says, you can eat it with your fingers. What's not to like?]


10. Lucky Devil's
6613 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(323) 465-8259

I like the cheesiness of the macaroni and cheese and the delicious cobbler with frozen custard.

[The picture is a LD's slider. She likes the delicious Kentucky Cream Cake for dessert (and she's little) so she hasn't been affected by the milkshake shrinkage].


Runners Up:

Astro Diner
Barragan's
Bay Cities Deli
Dumpling Master
Dupar's
Loteria
Mssr. Marcel's
Pink's
Square One


Next Wednesday: Her favorite whiskies (okay, maybe not)

Something Fishy Going On: Kiriko

I am lucky to have a good friend who is fluent in Japanese. Not only does he ply me with hard to find Japanese Whiskey on his frequent trips overseas, he brings me to his favorite ramen, sushi and other restaurants in town. I don't know if his chatting with the sushi chef gets us better food, but hey, it can't hurt.

His latest favorite for sushi is Kiriko in West LA, which lies at the southern tip of Sawatelle's Japanese commercial strip. Recently, he took me there and we enjoyed an appetizer/sushi omakase (tasting menu) sitting at the sushi bar.

I like sushi, but I'm all about the big, bold and complex, and fine sushi is a subtle undertaking. I can get excited about monk fish liver, roe and uni, with their richness and deep flavors, but I have to admit, the mere presence of raw fish on rice, even a fine toro, while good, doesn't really get me that excited. That all changed at Kiriko, but we'll get there.

The appetizers were non-sushi dishes. I loved the salted ginko nuts, soft, warm bright yellow nuts topped with sea salt, which we washed down with sake. These were the perfect bar snack, warm, nutty, salty...the flavor was similar to a chestnut but without the sweetness. I could get really addicted to these.

The nuts were accompanied by a piece of mango wrapped in a home-smoked salmon topped with caviar. The salmon was wonderful, having a real smoky taste; the taste of the char was in it, like a good Islay Scotch. The mango was a great counterpoint...a simple but well executed dish.

In terms of the sushi courses, all of it was very good, and I especially liked the toro (fatty tuna) and the uni. I'm a big uni fan, and Kiriko served us fresh uni caught at Catalina Island and dabbed with a drop of lemon juice...near perfect.

But what really got me going was kinmedai, or golden eye snapper sushi. This was the first time I'd had this red-tinged white fish. The taste was transcendent...it was so much more than raw fish. It had some of the fattiness of toro but also, a deep creaminess, a smoothness that was countered well by both rice and soy sauce.

The flavor was subtle but inherently attractive and magically enticing. We asked for another piece after our entire omakase was done.

I am, finally, a fish and rice convert.

Kiriko
11301 W Olympic Blvd # 102*
Los Angeles, CA 90064
(310) 478-7769

*While the address is Olympic, Kiriko is actually on the west side of Sawtelle, just north of Olympic. Parking is available and validated at the Banquet Center parking on the northwest corner of Olympic and Sawtelle.