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

Reasonable & Chic Sushi at K-Zo

K-Zo's decor can be described as chic. Hip. It seems like there's even a bar in the front, though I do think they only serve shochu cocktails. But unlike what comes to mind when I think of "hip sushi restaurant" (*cough* Katsuya Hollywood, Sushi Roku *cough*) it isn't crowded and loud and, as K-Zo has been known for, the prices are quite reasonable.
But really, my main reason for finally checking K-Zo out is a Yelp review that mentioned their sinful molten chocolate cake. I've long been searching for a good sushi joint that also offers good dessert (I mean, beyond your mochi ice cream and tempura ice cream).

But I'm ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning.

We started with a "seafood salad" ($16) - Tuna, yellowtail, salmon, whitefish, shrimp, and albacore on a bed of lettuce with soy mustard dressing
A bit heavy on the dressing, but otherwise good. Fish and green ingredients are good and fresh and the dressing works well for both.

Wakame (seaweed) salad - $8 (hey we wanted our greens and minerals)
Nice, light and healthy. Unlike the previous salad, the dressing here is not heavy and was just perfect.

Besides the standard sushi menu, K-Zo also has a specials menu featuring the rarer/seasonal fishies. I ordered some wild salmon.
The color is much darker than your regular salmon, and as you can probably tell from the lack of thick white stripes, this is a much leaner piece of fish. It was fresh, the fish/rice ratio was just right. The fish cuts are narrow so the portion isn't huge, but it's fair and big enough for a bite. A nice first impression of K-Zo's sushi.

As a comparison we also got the regular salmon sushi ($5/2pc order)
A fattier cut (but I like fatty too). Again, a good and fresh piece.

Speaking of fatty, I of course got my o-toro fix. I was very happy with the prices of toro here, which I think was only ~$10.
That long tail just means more fish for me ... This was a pretty fatty and smooth, melt-in-your-mouth toro. While not the best o-toro I've had, this was definitely one of the good ones, and at this price point, I was perfectly happy.

We like to end our sushi meals with some eel. This time to compare we got both the freshwater and seawater eels.
Freshwater Eel/Unagi ($5/2pc)
Seawater eel/Anago ($6/2pc)
Most Japanese people seem to prefer anago, and it is also higher priced. The unagi tends to be sweeter, which kind of provides a nice end to the meal, IMHO.

The chocolate molten cake I was looking forward to finally came. It was pretty small though! As you can see, it was only the size of an ice cream scoop.
It's small but packs a punch. Definitely rich and sinful. I also like the sesame ice cream quite a bit, but by itself. In this case the whole is less than the sum of the parts ... This small ramekin dish of chocolate cake is definitely enough. For one person, that is. As we were sharing, we're glad we had another dessert coming.

The lychee tart's portion was also pretty small.
Richer and denser than what I was expecting for a lychee tart, as it was a bit eggy. An enjoyable dessert, though I thought the taste and freshness of the lychees got lost in the rich eggy tart base.

Overall a very reasonably-priced sushi dinner with high quality and fresh ingredients. The dessert selections are much more interesting and varied than most of its counterparts (especially with the disappearance of Jinpachi's famous desserts). The dessert portions are on the small side, but might as well ... I shouldn't be eating so much anyway :P
Add on top of that free parking in the public structure right next to the restaurant, K-Zo is winning lots of points with me!

K-Zo
9240 Culver Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 202-8890

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

Shibucho Makes Me Squeal Like a Little Girl

Pairing wines with sushi might sound strange at first, but as a group of foodies experienced firsthand at the end of last year, the two make quite a pair.

Last year? Yeah I'm backlogged. Workin on it! Anyway, Fooddigger has been bringing foodbloggers and foodies around town together on many occasions last year. For their last dinner of the year, KevinEats, Tangbro, inomthings, FoodGPS, sinosoul, and I joined part of the Fooddigger family at Shibucho for a night of great sushi, and great vintage wines.

Now, the good thing about posting late is that I get 'cheat sheets' from the likes of Kevin who takes detailed notes, especially for all the wines that I can't keep track of! and inomthings who already did the background on some of the fishies we had that night.

The wines for the occasion were actually brought in by the wine collectors among us (not I), including the Fooddigger people and Kevin. Here are the red wine lineup.

Oh and when I say "vintage" wines I wasn't kidding. The youngest wine was a 1989, but everything else was older than me with the oldest being a couple 1975 wines.

We toasted the started of the night with a 1978 Dom Perignon, courtesy of Kevin and Tangbro. Light, crisp, and sweet. I wasn't a big champagne fan prior to this one glass.

Foodwise, We started with some ankimo in ponzu sauce.
This was one of the best ankimos I've had yet, the texture being smoother than most. This actually went quite well with the champagne and apparently even better with the red wine we had next, the 1982 Chateau Pavie-Decesse.

Sunomono of mirugai (geoduck clam), aoyagi (surf clam), and hotate (scallops)
Light, and sweet. The marinade was apparently white miso (thx inomthings) which explains the sweet but mild and not overbearing taste.

Next we had bincho maguro/albacore salad in ponzu sauce. Nicely prepared as the ponzu draws out the flavor of the albacore but the lettuce and tomatoes helped cut the acidity of ponzu which I normally don't like too much.

Then onto a series of sashimi. First up is some fatty bluefin tuna (chutoro)
The chutoro is not the fattiest cut, but it's very fresh and still had a nice fattiness to it.
The toro, along with the other tuna, works quite well with the red wine.
We also had some regular blue fin maguro, and tai (red snapper) sashimi, followed by buri sashimi
Buri is "old" yellowtail (yellowtail goes through 3 periods in their life cycle and are called kanpachi, hamachi, and buri, respectively). I don't think I really enjoyed buri before this, but apparently buri is fattiest during the winter, i.e. at the time I ate this, so it makes sense that I like this one better than previous ones.

Salmon salad with onions, arugula, and salmon roe, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Then we had an ... eggplant parmesan. This was a surprising dish considering we're eating at a sushi restaurant but apparently Shige-san is known for occasionally serving western-inspired dishes.
Possibly the best eggplant I have ever had. Unlike other 'eggplant parmesans' this one is lightly sauced, which makes it not overbearing (not saying that all others are) but it's subtly sweet and very delicious. Shige-san also stated that Japanese eggplants are very different and much better than any other counterpart. This eggplant parmesan was quite sweet, but light.

Afterwards was a series of delicious, fresh sushi, for example this toro sushi.
Inomthings and I both let out a squeal as this beauty went into our mouths, prompting Shige-san to ask "Oishii deshou?" *nod* *nod* *munch* *munch*

Probably even more than toro, I loooove my hamachi belleh!
Smooth, fatty, delicious melt-in-your-mouth. Mmmm.

More great sushi followed (hirame, kinmedai).

After all the sushi, we had a daikon stew with buri kama (collar).
Given that this was in mid-December, this was such a perfect dish. Buri is apparently fattiest in the winter, and daikon is in season also during the winter months. The daikon was sweet and so~ soft. I kept thinking back to this dish throughout the winter, especially when I was down with a cold. Sigh.

At the end of the meal, Will from Fooddigger was apparently craving some uni! He asked who else wanted an uni hand roll. Well, uh ... me? me? :D
Some of us split some uni hand rolls, so we each got half a handroll.
The uni was sweet and creamy. A very nice way to end the meal. Well, pre-desserts, that is.

Instead of serving Japanese desserts or mochi ice cream or fresh fruits, Shige-san served Western-style desserts, and everyone got something different (like this tiramisu)- fun!
I was happy to get the blueberry tart since I love blueberries.

A feast. A feast like no other, and I probably will not have another like this. Just the wines alone were such a privilege to drink. My favorite was the 1976 Rioja Bosconia (R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Rioja Viña Bosconia Gran Reserva ). And to top it all off with such great sashimi, sushi, and the amazing eggplant and daikon stew .... Mmmm. Not to mention sharing it all with such great foodie company. Twas a night to remember.


Shibucho
3114 Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90057
(213) 387-8498
http://www.shibucho-la.com/