LA's Ultimate Tempura Bowl: Hannosuke

Tempura had always been an accompaniment to soba or udon for me, not a meal to order by itself .That is, until Hannosuke opened inside the food court of Mitsuwa Marketplace on Centinela. Hannosuke is an outpost of the tempura specialist in Tokyo, and the thing to get here is the Edomae Tendon ($12.95) (meaning Edo-style, Edo being the other name for Tokyo), a tempura rice bowl that comes with miso soup.

This upgrade from the Original Tendon that's $8.95 gets you anago (seawater eel) from Tokyo. See the longest piece of tempura up there in the bowl? That's the anago! Well worth the extra spending.

Both the seafood and vegetables inside and the batter outside are much better than other tempura you' d find in the area, and the tendon comes with a deep fried, soft-boiled egg that just brings everything together once you break it. Hannosuke is definitely the place to go for tempura in West LA.

Hannosuke
3760 S Centinela Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90066
(310) 398-2113

25-Layer Pork at Kimukatsu (Honolulu, HI)

With the number of Japanese tourists swarming Hawaii every year, it's no surprise that Honolulu would have great Japanese food. From ramen to handmade soba, you can find pretty much everything here. One of the places I had my eye on was Kimukatsu, famous for their pork katsu made by stacking 25 layers of pork slices, then deep frying it. This way, the katsu is supposed to retain more of the juices than a thick piece of pork cutlet.

Now, Hawaii is also not cheap. An order of pork Katsu set (with rice, cabbage, miso soup, pickles) would be $19 normally but they do have a special menu during lunch. The regular tonkatsu order is not on this menu but you can get a katsudon set ("The Original Kimukatsu Bowl") for $16 or the Kimukatsu Curry for $13.

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Eastbound Food Caravan 2: Ashirwad (Upland, CA)

As Eating LA said when we were eating at Ashirwad, the best Indian restaurant in Los Angeles is actually not in LA - it's in Upland! On our latest food crawl, after Taza and Falafel Me, Food GPS led us to this place, following a tip he got from someone he met on an airplane.

Ashirwad, which means "the blessings" in Sanskrit, is strictly vegetarian and features many Gujarati specialties. I'm no expert in Indian food, but I have visited my share of Indian restaurants. Still, I was entirely unfamiliar with some of the dishes here! There are some street food like the Khasta kachori ($4.99)

The khasta kachori is a puri (crispy pastry) stuffed with potatoes, roasted spices, topped with onion, cilantro, yogurt, and a sweet and sour (and spicy) sauce made of tamarind, jaggery, and cumin.

There's also Bhel Puri ($3.99) consisting of puffed rice, papadi (small, deep fried puris), sev, onion, potatoes and sweet and sour chutney.

Both of the dishes above were crunchy, sweet, sour, and spicy at once. They pack a lot of strong and unusual flavors.

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