Nishimura: The Beverly Hills Sushi Fortress

There was someone who kept claiming that Nishimura was better than all the sushi places I've brought him to. I took him to Sushi Zo, he says Nishimura is better. I took him to Sushi Mori, he says Nishimura is better value. So finally I just retorted back with "So why haven't you taken me there?" So off we went!!

Nishimura is located across the street from the Pacific Design Center. There's no sign, just a tall, solid, wooden gate, in front of which you may occasionally find a towncar or two. Street parking are aplenty next to it.

Unfortunately it was rather dark and I didn't want to use flash so only a few of the photos really turned out well. I'll just give you guys a sampling.

At first I was a bit disappointed because Nishimura himself was not the one serving me sushi. But my young sushi chef was very friendly and as it turned out, very good. We got to talking and apparently before going to Nishimura he used to work at Jinpachi.

Among our dishes were a sampling of oysters - 3 kinds per person.
All very fresh and delicious.

Then came a slew of sashimi. Unlike Zo which was mostly sushi or Mori which offers a significant number of cooked dishes for the omakase, our omakase here was significantly composed of sashimi dishes. I'm not complaining, mind you.

Among them were octopus with yuzu.
Fresh and chewy. "Crunchy" even. The quality of the ingredients at Nishimura is evident.

There were tons of hamachi and albacore with ponzu sashimi, etc, all of which were very good. It's a lot of fun watching this young chef coming up with dish after dish, all of which he tried to put special touches on.

The highlight of my meal was probably this one: seared toro with white truffle salt and yuzu.
Orgasm on a plate. I mean, it's practically everything that I love, with the absence of foie gras! The toro used here was fatty and delicious, but the one used for our simple toro sushi we had later that night was even better - it tasted fresher and fattier than the seared one.

I didn't spend the whole night eating fatty fish, though. The waitstaff also brought out piping hot ginko nuts with sea salt.

The highlight towards the end of the meal for me were these fresh king crab legs.
Fresh, juicy, meaty. I had to chow down with my fingers to make sure I got every little piece of meat out of those shells.

The meal for 2 post-tips was $160 - which was comparable to my meal at Sushi Mori, but with more of the things I like (sashimi!). I had to agree that Nishimura was very good indeed, and yes, probably is a better value than Mori. At least, I felt like I got more for my money here.

Nishimura
8684 Melrose Ave
West Hollywood, CA 90069
(310) 659-4770