An Intimate Sushi Omakase Experience at Nozawa Bar (Beverly Hills)

When they built Sugarfish in Beverly Hills, they had planned for Nozawa Bar all along and kept a room in the back for that sole purpose. Now, Nozawa Bar is open and taking reservations for ten people, two seatings per night for a sushi omakase experience. It's not Nozawa wielding the knife, but Osamu Fujita has long worked with Nozawa and has his stamp of approval. After my omakase meal there, I would say perhaps the setting and timing actually allows for a more refined experience than the busy Sushi Nozawa was in Studio City.

I knew my sushi, or thought I did, but for more than a couple of courses at Nozawa Bar I had a few moments where I went "no way, that wasn't ...". There were moments of learning that season really matters, and preparation matters. More on that later, on to the meal first. 

As I said, there are two seatings per night for everyone (at 6PM and 8:30PM), so don't be late! I was five minutes late and missed Fujita-san slicing up the jelly fish for the first course. I didn't miss eating the course, though, luckily (everyone is served the courses at the same time).

The crisp jellyfish was a nice opener to whet your appetite.
Sashimi plate of tuna and octopus before moving on to nigiri sushi

The nigiri courses start out with a bang with the chu toro. This a blue fin tuna chu toro, although the fattiness is close to oo toro.

Just like Nozawa's style, the rice is served slightly warm so that the sushi feels like it's melting in your mouth.

Ika (squid)

Fresh and firm squid on top of a shiso leaf.

Switching to the opposite spectrum of texture is a perfectly creamy Santa Barbara uni

A generous serving of it, too!

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Osawa Upgrades Old Shaab Location in Pasadena

When Shaab shuttered it left Pasadena devoid of shabu shabu. Now Osawa has taken over the exact same spot, serving shabu Shabu, sushi, and otsumami (small plates). Osawa is owned by Sayuri Tachibe, the wife of Chaya's corporate chef, Shigefumi Tachibe.

I went with Wandering Chopsticks who I know doesn't drink much so I ordered something sweeter that she can enjoy, a yuzu sake called Aladdin. Definitely easy to drink.

There's also blood orange lemonade for those who don't drink at all.

We started with some otsumami. I had been eyeing the beef tongue with Furofuki daikon radish and shaved kelp ($11)

I wondered if this was a common combination. I've never had shaved kelp (as opposed to dried) and like bonito flakes, when they get wet they clump together making it hard to separate with your chopsticks, but overall I liked this interesting dish. The beef tongue was quite tender and I'm partial to daikon.

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Omakase at Sushi Kimagure (Pasadena)

I used to complain that there was no stellar sushi in Pasadena, but that was before Sushi Kimagure moved in. The man behind Kimagure is Ike-san from the beloved Sushi Ike that was in Hollywood. The day he decided to shutter his Hollywood spot and open up in Pasadena was a good day for us.

Dining at the sushi bar at Kimagure is by reservation only, and considering our 7pm party did not leave until near closing time, there's probably only one seating per night.

It was my long awaited first visit so of course we had omakase. We didn't get Ike-san as our itamae that night but our meal was still excellent.

It was impressive to watch how fast these sushi chefs were working, especially considering their age!

To start, a vegetable potato salad

Most places may save toro towards the end of a meal, but here they dive directly into bluefin tuna (maguro) and toro as your first pieces.

The toro was superb

Sushi is not just about the fresh fish, but the rice as well, and here at Kimagure they are both excellent. It's not the warm rice of Nozawa (which I sometimes think is too warm and detracts from the fish) but it still melts in your mouth.

Next was another one of my favorite cuts, hamachi belly

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Tasting Menu at Shunji (West LA)

Shunji is one of the hot recent restaurant openings, with Chef Shunji Nakao's serving his "contemporary" omakase in an inconspicuous stand-alone building on Pico Blvd. There are only a handful of tables and a few seats at the sushi bar, and the chef prepared most of the dishes personally (some get fired in the kitchen).

His printed menu looks like the standard Japanese restaurant, but we had read about his omakase (the omakase was not printed on the menu) and just asked for that.

As an amuse bouche, a small bowl of jelly with cucumber and vinegar sauce

Next is a plate of small bites of vegetables, ankimo topped with caviar, a ball of purple potato with blue cheese and persimmon, and sweet potato with feta and truffle

Unsure if we were supposed to eat these in a particular order, we moved in one direction and it moves from rich (ankimo) to the palate cleansing, crisp, unadorned vegetables to the creamy potatoes

The scallop sashimi, topped with arugula flower, was so fresh

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Kiyokawa's New Sashimi-centric Omakase

Kiyokawa had been on my to-try list for some time since Jonathan Gold loved it so much, but I had sort of forgotten about this little place in Beverly Hills and stored it in the back of my mind. I recently dug it out and made it a point to finally go.

There are two omakase options at Kiyokawa, a full omakase (kaiseki) for $78 or a sushi-only omakase for $48. As I sat down and read the omakase menu there were things like miso black cod and other cooked items, but then they told me to ignore the menu. They had just started a new omakase menu and it was completely different than what was written. They recently changed the omakase menu to be more sashimi-focused rather than cooked dishes. Sounds even better to me.

Sushi Chef Satoshi Kiyokawa

Our first course came in an orange sitting on ice. Inside the orange was some halibut sashimi with cucumber sunomono and tomato


Albacore salad topped w crispy green onion

This was a rather big plate for a second course with plenty of albacore. As the ponzu sauce that normally comes with albacore tends to be too astringent for me at times, I preferred this.

Live sweet shrimp and Hama Hama oyster topped with uni

Did I mention the amaebi was a live? The legs attached to the head were still moving on the ice! (Sorry PETA)

Still, the oyster with the creamy uni stole the show for me.

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SUGARFISH: Quality Sushi, "Everyday Luxury"

Emmanuele (Lele) Massimini and his friends were avid fans of Sushi Nozawa and made the trek from Santa Monica to Studio City every week for Chef Kazunori Nozawa's sushi. When Chef Nozawa mentioned his concept of bringing his high quality sushi at a cheaper price to them, the SUGARFISH team was born.

Photo courtesy of SUGARFISH

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Gonpachi - Torrance and the Miyako Hybrid Hotel

Upon pulling into the Miyako Hybrid Hotel parking lot I already loved the place: they have special parking spaces for Fuel Efficient Vehicles. Go Prius!

We were invited for a tasting of the Gonpachi Restaurant that opened as part of the Miyako Hybrid hotel. I remembered going to the Beverly Hills Gonpachi but that was so long ago before they changed their menu.

Unlike the very traditional decor at the Gonpachi Beverly Hills, the Gonpachi Torrance went for a more modern and "hip" look.

While waiting for the others to finish their hotel tour (coming from Pasadena, we couldn't make it to Torrance on time), I had a shoju-based cocktail at the bar.
We started with some Zensai (appetizers): tofu, shrimp shinjo, kinpira
The shrimp shinjo was paired with a sweet & sour fish sauce. The tofu seemed to be homemade and had a nicely rich texture.

Our meals were paired with the following sakes: Hakkaisan, Aiyama Nanbu-bijin (a floral sake), and Onikoroshi Daiginjo

Kobe Beef Carpaccio with ponzu and spicy miso sauce.
The kobe carpaccio had a seared edge and a smoky smell.

The most impressive item that night was definitely the Sashimi platter.
Abalone, salmon, squid, tuna, orange surf clams and more.

Here they serve Hokkaido "Bafun" uni, not your usual Santa Barbara, and it actually has a stronger, sweeter and more concentrated flavor, although it's actually not as creamy.

The sashimi was followed by Gindara (grilled miso marinated black cod)
Very tender, flaky and sweet. It pairs well with the onikoroshi. It's served atop rice with edamame and seaweed.

Sushi plate
I found that the fish, and especially the toro, to be of very good quality, but the rice was too dense.

Just like their Beverly Hills counterpart did, Gonpachi handmakes their soba in-house.
They do this in a small room with glass windows so patrons can actually watch it being made as you walk into the entrance.
We had the Zaru soba to semi-end the meal before the dessert.
The soba here is certainly better than store-bought dried soba (although it's no Ichimiann). Soba-yu is also served with it.

After cleansing with a cup of hojicha that had a lovely roasted aroma, for dessert we had the Pumpkin Zenzai (sweet red beans, mochi balls, vanilla ice cream in pumpkin soup, topped with almonds).
I've had this dessert before and have always enjoyed it very much. I'm happy to see it is served here also.

Torrance is a mecca of Japanese food in this area, but the "fine dining" and sushi restaurants are still lacking. With its ambiance and setting in this new LEED silver-certified hotel, Gonpachi is poised to fill this gap for the locals. After all, as much as we love Ichimiann and Otafuku, we can't very well hold a business meeting there.

Gonpachi - Torrance
21381 South Western Avenue
Torrance, CA 90501
(310) 320-6700

Toshi Sushi (Little Tokyo): Omakase vs "Omakase"

Craving sushi, I remembered that Toshi Sushi in downtown has received a lot of praise from fellow bloggers recently, including Sinosoul, djjewelz, and others.
We came on Easter night and the restaurant was empty. I asked to sit at the sushi bar, and the waitress asked what I was going to order. Sushi? Probably Omakase?

Then she asked what kind of omakase I'm ordering, the set or something-or-other.
Toshi Sushi offers an "Omakase" Sushi set that is printed on the menu. For $44.50 you get:
daily appetizers, asari (clam) miso soup, wagyu tataki, grilled black cod, and "most valuable 10 pieces of sushi assortment of the day", and ice cream. This is the meal that djjewelz reviewed.

OK, understandable if the place was full, but why do they care if the restaurant is empty. Moving on, I said I'll order whatever is needed for me to sit at the sushi bar.
We ended up getting a full-on omakase. Whatever Toshi-san wants.

1. We started with some appetizers: seaweed from Japan, mountain yam, shark fin, and pear.
Some of you may be furious about the sharks fin offered here, but I wasn't. I grew up loving sharkin and stil do ... A nice combination of texture here between the sticky yam and seaweed and the crisper pear and sharkfin.

2. Halibut with marinated seaweed.
This first sushi course is a wonderful introduction of the freshness of the sushi we were about to have and the subtlety of Toshi-san's touch.

3. Bluefin tuna from Spain (that I forgot to take a photo of).
It's smooth and fatty, amazingly so for a non-toro tuna.

4. Snapper from Japan.
Fresh and chewy. The marinade is light and not overwhelming.

5. Deep fried octopus.
Chewy texture. The batter is a bit salty and greasy but the dish overall is good and flavorful.

6. Mackerel with marinated seaweed.
The mackerel has a natural saltiness. Both the flavor and texture are quite nice.

7. Chu-toro bluefin tuna from Spain.
This piece was not too fatty but still melts in your mouth and has that nice oily flavor. And of course, fresh.

8. Here we moved back to a lighter set of appetizers. A trio of dishes:

Sea cucumber
Nice and crunchy, surprisingly so as usually cooked sea cucumber is very fatty and tendon-like. Still, if you're used to sea cucumber you would enjoy this and otherwise it might be too weird.

Kumamoto oysters.
This has a bit too much sauce for my taste.

Baby squids.

Sweet and slimy. Loved it.

9. Now we're back to the fattier and heavier side of the meal, starting with Hamachi belly.
My favorite, always. Fatty but still a bit chewy. Nice flavor

Next came the most memorable and unique dish of the night:
10. Slowly baked bluefin tuna cheek.
This was my first time having cooked bluefin tuna cheek and it was amazing. It was tender but a bit chewy and meaty, had lots of flavor, a lot of oil. Excellent. If Toshi has this when you go, do try it.

11. O-toro (again, forgot to take a photo. Guess I was hungry!)
Melts in your mouth, definitely much fattier than the chu-toro.

12. Seared salmon belly with foie gras.
Fat on fat. Oh yes. The texture and flavor combinations are great, in that fatty melt-in-your-mouth-save-my-heart kind of way.

Because my companion loves his tamagoyaki, he asked for an order. Instead, we were given a tasting of three tamagoyakis:
13. Tamagoyaki with seaweed powder, tamagoyaki with yam, shiso, and plum, and a regular tamagoyaki.
In those Japanese comics or drama people always argue whether or not they like the salty or sweet tamagoyaki. Well, here we have both and more.

14. Aji from Japan.
The sushi here is never overwhelmed by sauces.

15. To finish up, I had an order of really sweet uni (Santa Barbara) while my not-an-uni-lover-companion had some ikura.
16. Followed by an order of unagi.
Nicely seared meaty unagi and again, not doused in too much sauce.

Brown rice tea to cleanse off.

Most people would count uni or unagi as their “dessert” but we have such a sweet tooth interesting so we got a couple:

“Chocolate Souffle”
It’s a perfectly fine dessert but I do not think this is a proper soufflé. This isn’t the first time I encounter “soufflés” at Japanese restaurants (and beyond) though. The vanilla mochi ice cream, though, was quite good and noticeably fresher than ones you get at the grocery stores (prompting us to walk across the street to Mikawaya!)

Panna CottaThis dessert worked better than the soufflé for us.

This meal wasn't $44.50. Obviously, right? That would've been amazing. Still, we got away with ~$80 per person after tax and tips which I still think was a great deal considering what we ate.
I was quite impressed with the quality of the sushi we had, and that baked bluefin tuna cheeks? Incredible.

Toshi Sushi
359 E 1st St
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 680-4166
www.sushicateringtoshi.com