Sushi:

Sushi has been integral to the dissemination of exceptional food in Los Angeles. Ventura Blvd likely houses more sushi parlors per block than any piece of real estate worldwide. The San Fernando Valley, where Ventura Blvd covers a wide stretch from East to West, does not have an immense Japanese population living there. But it does have the highest concentration of sushi bars anywhere. There is the sushi restaurant where the waiters tap dance as they serve you newfangled rolls. All you can eat sushi bars make their presence known. Even the purported creator of the California roll (a concoction of snow crab, avocado, and rice wrapped into nori and cut into bite-size pieces) makes its home on the Blvd. Sushi, namely fresh fish, can be a health food pointing towards our collective fascination with the once exotic though now more commonplace association with raw fish. One need only go back to the 1970s and Little Tokyo’s Tokyo Kaikan to notice the humble beginnings of sushi restaurants in LA.

A famously strict sushi bar which seems to be a rite of passage for studio execs and TV stars is firmly situated in a non-descript mini-mall. Chef and owner Kazunori Nozawa of the eponymous Sushi Nozawa on Ventura Blvd, near Universal Studios, in Studio City has been serving up sushi his way or the highway since the 1980s. Many now successful sushi chefs are acolytes of Nozawa’s now almost patented “Chef’s Choice: Trust Me” sytle of sushi. Urban legend goes that Nozawa will throw you out on your bum if you so as happen to mention a predilection for California or spicy tuna rolls. Some sashimi (almost always baby tuna), nigiri-zushi, and some simple rolls such as his to-die-for blue crab hand rolls are served up here. There is no tempura nor other cooked foods here. You’d be hard pressed to find a bowl of miso soup. A cartoonist of The Simpson’s even has a piece of cell animation depicting a traditional sushi chef (possibly Nozawa himself?) admonishing Homer for reaching over the counter and snatching a whole fish. The décor at Sushi Nozawa can be summed up as pedestrian at best. One conjures up images of a cheap Americanized Chinese takeout joint, not the epitome of fresh sushi where the bill can run upwards of a C-note person with a beer or two.

What you’ll get here is tuna over rice along with yellowtail, red snapper, scallop, shrimp, halibut, albacore, and maybe a hand roll or two from a monkfish liver roll to the famous blue crab one. All are of the utmost freshness from a chef obsessed with scouring the local fish market downtown for the only the freshest in the early morning hours. Sometimes he will allow you a couple extras that you can specifically ask for once he has finished his set omakase (literally translated as to entrust or to protect, more readily identified as chef’s choice). Sometimes there can be an arduous wait while at other times a seat opens up quickly. As a side note, Sushi Nozawa closes on the weekends. Nozawa has a pressing golf game to attend to on those days so you’ll have to make do until the business week commences anew.

Not many people realize it, but an exceptionally tiny and exceptionally excellent sushi bar has quietly gone about its business in Canoga Park, a couple miles away from the heavy traffic and hubbub of Ventura Blvd, although like its competitors it is still situated in a mini-mall. The name of the sushi bar is Go’s Mart and is a play on the words Go Smart. The chef does have a snide sense of humor. Its neighbors remain classic pod mall participants such as a Papa John’s outfit and a tanning salon. The sign above heralds SUSHI in bright neon letters. Once, upon asking the chef if he had any walk-ins, he sheepishly replied, “Not really.” When you walk inside, you’ll notice a stack of Japanese videos in one corner, surely an oddity for the ages. The refrigerator case up front has fish lined up and arranged just like a fish market. Off to the side, eight or so high-backed chairs reside overlooking the sushi counter and the chef. All of two tables are placed right by the bar. The sushi chef here is far from strict, no tyranny or sushi despotism here. Exceptional fish remains the order of the day whether you’re arriving for a no-brainer spider roll or ganja (aka marijuana) roll after a movie or you’re there for a no-holds barred multi-course sushi extravaganza.

We prefer the authentic dishes here. Some of our favorites are the seared toro (fatty tuna) steak topped off with ponzu and 24-karat gold flakes that melts in your mouth like a prime filet. The smooth ankimo (cold monkish liver) sauced with sweet misso reminds landlubbers of the foie gras of the sea due to its supreme richness and smooth buttery flavor. There is a special that frequently appears on the handwritten chalkboard called kawagishi toro, which is essentially the toro that has been scraped from the bone of the fish. The chef places the kawagishi on top of small pearls of sushi rice and the whole is drizzled with a light homemade soy sauce and topped with caviar and more gold leaf. The sushi tastes just as beautiful as it looks, which is no small feat when most sushi bars care more about aesthetics than freshness and taste. He also serves a wide variety of fish from the yellowtail family from the quite exotic kanpachi to the almost never available buri (wild Japanese yellowtail). Each time you ask about a particular dish, the chef replies, “Good choice”, which seems to be a running shtick with him. As you eye the chalkboard some more, you’ll notice a blaring signal. The words HOLY COW will grab anyone’s attention. What is that? You guessed correctly: Kobe beef, imported straight from Japan (not to be confused with American Kobe, which one finds ground up into Kobe beef burgers at fashionable local hot spots). The slab of Kobe beef is unwrapped from the butcher paper and sliced into thick pieces to order. He places them on a pan and sears them just so placing a piece on a ball of rice and places it on your plate. This seared Kobe beef sushi elucidates our long-standing atavistic relationship to the purest of beef. You have to arrive early to make sure the Kobe beef remains or else you may be out in the cold. Go’s Mart offers other great oddities including a made-to-order blue crab hand roll blended with truffle oil and a baby shrimp topped with white truffles and wrapped in nori. The bill will be dear but is surely a small price to pay for exceptional sushi, quality, and creativity.

Another noteworthy sushi shop, Shibucho, resides on a lonely stretch of Beverly Blvd away from the glitter of the fashionable Westside and the sushi heavy Ventura Blvd. The head chef and owner, Shige Kudo, bought the restaurant decades ago from his former employer who operated the original location of Shibucho on Alameda St on the top floor of Yoahan Plaza (now known as Mitsuwa Marketplace) in the heart of Little Tokyo back when people were merely starting to get the idea of what sushi can be. Shige serves all the usual sushi suspects in his almost hidden speakeasy bar reminiscent of bars scattered in back alleys of Tokyo. Shige has a preference for older Bordeaux and Burgundy to go with his sushi so the wine list is comprised of bottles from the 1950s and 1960s ranging in price into the hundreds of dollars. The reserve list is a fun read, which you can pour over if you’re waiting for the rest of your party to arrive. He does offer sake and beer. He only offers an omakase menu to regular customers who he has a trusted relationship with. Shige at times plays with tradition. For instance, he adds olive oil to seared albacore salad and once offered real French foie gras (imported from France) simply sautéed in a pan with pure butter, and possibly a sprinkle or two of salt. The ingredient itself, goose liver, sings without the presence of a sweet or sour sauce to disguise the true flavor of quality food. You would be hard pressed to find that at your neighborhood sushi bar unless you happen to live near the intersection of Beverly and Rampart. Italian and French desserts are offered here from a smooth, intense chocolate mousse to a restrained, light tiramisu. Sometimes a reservation is required for the bar. It’s helpful to note that Shibucho on Beverly remains open until midnight (though used to close at 3 in the morning), so you can get some albacore sushi, tiramisu, and a glass of 1961 Cheval Blanc as a coda to your late nite flick.

A few years back the original owner of Shibucho (the downtown LA Yaohan plaza location) came back out of retirement to the U.S. to open up a new sushi parlor with his son in a mini-mall on 19^th St in Costa Mesa (next door to an In N Out burger). His sushi has always been traditional, but he’s far from being fanatical about. You can order by the piece or the traditional omakase. Whichever way you decide to go you’ll still end up winning. Not all of his sushi melts on the mouth. In fact, one of the unique characteristics about sushi is the texture in addition of course to flavor. Some pieces are chewy and some not to much. Shibutani-san usually serves up a piece of cooked fish as an amuse-bouche before the onslaught of great raw fish. His wife will place a cup of piping hot green tea in a homemade pottery mug and refill it before you even realized you needed it. The service speaks in subtleties rather than being overbearing. The sushi bar reveals itself as a beautiful family operation. Trust Shibutani-san and he won’t steer you wrong. He also enjoys transfers his artistry to his customers and educate about the different varieties of fish out there. His unique homemade soy sauce, ponzu, and yuzu sauce only help to reinforce the lengths he goes to for his devoted customers. Dinner is quite reasonable at Shibucho. There are usually free tidbits thrown in on the house whether you are a regular or just becoming one.

The number of sushi bars in Los Angeles never ceases to amaze us and continues to show up everywhere. If you can think of an area lacking in sushi restaurants, before you know it there will be one if not two or more there. Sushi is healthy, tasty, and flavorful and at the right sushi bar becomes an artistic endeavor worthy of veneration.

Fried Chicken:

We have been on a search for fried chicken in Los Angeles for what seems like ages. But it is beyond difficult to find the immaculate Southern fried version of yore or even other possible versions. One of the best places around that is now defunct (Paio in Silverlake) served up my favorite upscale version, which incorporated both the fried with the smoked to create the most utterly delectable BBQ fried chicken around. Los Angeles does try to shy away from deep fried foods (although the denizens of LA do like fatty foods or else there would not be a phalanx patiently waiting for guacamole sour cream chili nacho cheese dogs at all hours of the day at Pink’s). It is not exactly detailed in the firmament of the city’s health nut scriptures.

One can get their fried chicken fix at the minimalistic, mini-mall situated Flossie’s along an active stretch of Redondo Beach Blvd in Torrance, just a few blocks away from the ubiquitous ramen and shabu shabu joints popping up all over the place. In case you get misty eyed about watching airplanes flying over head, LAX is merely a hop, skip, and a jump away. So finally you’re at the beginning of the steam table counter at Flossie’s, after staring at the signage touting their use of 100% cholesterol-free vegetable oil for hours and marveling at the Mason jars holding pickled, preserved vegetables scattered around the shelves. Meat and threes are the name of the game just as it would be Deep South cities such as Biloxi or Bay St. Louis. The fried chicken will do a southern grandmother proud as will the syrupy though expertly spiced candied yams, tart collard greens, and smooth mac n cheese to round out your plate dinner. Dinners here can ultimately feed a family of three and arrive with a choice of a buttermilk biscuit or cornbread, a dessert such as banana pudding or blackberry cobbler, and a glass of official-tasting sweet tea or Kool-Aid to wash it all down. Be careful or else someone will have to roll you out of the place.

If your fried chicken fix has still not left you satisfied, then perhaps a visit and plenty of spare time is warranted to the Lilliputian pan-fried chicken joint, Maurice’s Snack n’ Chat – Fried Chicken to Go. It’s easy to miss since it remains a mere spec on the vast boulevard. Maurice Prince, the proprietor/chef, had once owned a ultimately more upscale, almost haute Southern sit-down restaurant a few blocks west along Pico Blvd where celebrities and movie starts would be coddled to no end and served heavy, homemade foods such as smothered short ribs, pork chops, fried chicken, and occasionally (on advance) Southern soufflé known as spoonbread. Stretch limos would idle double-parked outside while the starts inside would slum it munching on crispy, juicy fried chicken on a stretch of a Pico more known for body shops and liquor stores than for haute food. Eventually, all good things come to an end. Ms. Prince lost her lease or may have had other financial problems, but after a few years on hiatus she resurfaced to the new takeout shop (just a block or so west of the infamous Oki Dog) where only fried chicken and Southern sides are served up in a space barely containing a couple makeshift tables and some of the relics and tchotchkes of her old place. On a recent visit, the octogenarian Maurice greeted me with a Texas howdy. She told me that no one seems to make the kind of fried chicken she makes anymore. Let’s hope she’s right. Everything here is served a la carte and made-to-order. Even though it looks like a fast food shack from the outside, the food here is more aligned with the slow food movement popular with epicureans these days.

Maurice mentioned in passing that it would take a little more than a while. So what you do here is you wait, and you wait, and you wait a little more. As she went back in the kitchen to start up the cast iron skillet for the pan-frying, my eyes started to wander. A bunch of autographed headshots of actors and politicos from Henry Winkler to the late Johnnie Cochran to Diane Feinstein line one wall. You half expect a vintage Magic Hour Lakers jersey to be hanging from one wall like a precious tapestry. A couple faded reviews of her old place on Pico near Sierra Bonita were displayed, along with one praising here aforementioned spoonbread. There were close to a dozen certificates from the LA Chamber of Commerce to a National Geographic Centennial to even a cool swimming certificate from an aquatic center. In another corner, an old, burnished armoire with trinkets spread across it stood in veneration.

When the chicken arrives (after the better part of an hour), you bite it into some of the most beautiful, mahogany colored, shatteringly crispy skinned, incredibly well-spiced fried chicken around town. The candied yams that will arrive are freshly cut, cooked, and blissfully not too sweet though the greens are just ok along with the cornbread stuffing. If you happen to have saved some room, the warm coconut cake is not to be missed. Small mom-and-pop cafes like this are what makes Los Angeles such a great place to eat. You usually can’t get character and great food at the same place. Most of the corporate, chain restaurants spreading across the county sacrifice one over the other and sadly usually both.

BBQ may just be one of the sweetest words in the English language or any other lingua franca for that matter. At least, among people who think nothing of driving a hundred miles or so outside of town just to receive a few bites of gastronomic authenticity. Others have delved so deeply into and whole hog into the lexicon of bbq that they have no choice, but to devote their entire doctoral dissertations on the topic. But here the point is American BBQ whether a regionality unique to Memphis, Central Texas, Kansas City, Oakland, North Carolina or even Los Angeles. It can take on the guise of shredded, pulled pork (from the pork shoulder, of course) with a pungent proprietary vinegar cue sauce slapped all over it and sidled into a squishy hamburger bun. Or perhaps beef brisket smoked over hickory logs for hours on end until the mahogany smoke ring is just so. Or maybe it’s a slab of hefty pork ribs smoked and slathered in a sweetish, molasses-tinged sauce to rival the intricate mole sauces of Oaxaca.

We are blessed with BBQ of substance in Los Angeles no matter how vehemently the ex-pat Southerners will decry it. The message here is not the Lucille’s or Tony Roma’s that have colonized shopping centers and fashionable thoroughfares throughout the heart of the Southland and continue to multiply, but rather the individual mom-and-pop operations who go about their business quietly through the merest of take-out windows and plastic utensils.

One such place is Phillip’s BBQ, which actually started with one location in Leimert Park, near the Crenshaw District and has continued to a total of three outfits, a veritable mini-empire. (Though we will not think of it as a chain in the usual sense of the word.) The original along Leimert Park, barely much larger than a telephone booth, is sandwiched between a liquor store and a hair salon. Cue fans are usually huddled three-deep in a queue that stretches throughout the narrow vestibule and outside across to the salon. The chimney lets out gusts of thick hickory smoke which perfumes the air like nothing less than heaven. You wait in line patiently take a look at what you want usually either short-end pork ribs, gargantuan beef ribs, hot links (beef or chicken, from locale links purveyor Pete’s Homemade Louisiana Links along Jefferson Blvd), sliced beef, or bbq chicken. Your sides will usually be either homemade potato salad or macaroni salad or the stupendous sweet though spicy bbq baked beans. Once you have ordered take your tiny numbered receipt and wait patiently or rather impatiently for your bag of food to arrive. Perhaps it’s time to strike up a conversation with your fellow citizens. If you happen to need something stronger than Diet Coke to go with your bbq, then take a short jaunt to the liquor store for some beers. As a note, Phillip’s only does take out so everything is wrapped up to go. You can munch on your beautiful ribs sluiced with hot peppery bbq sauce with dried red chile peppers swimming on top the ribs in your car or the nearby namesake shoebox park if happen to lack the will power and self-control to trudge on back home.

Plenty of napkins are a necessity (make sure you specifically ask for extras, which are served gratis though extra sauce is not) and if your vehicle escapes unscathed from the heavy sauce stains then you may just be an artist worthy of a retrospective at the Guggenheim. The two other locations are in Inglewood and an easy access one on Crenshaw Blvd, catty corner to the I-10 Fwy off ramp.

If you have happened to stumble upon the Compton-Gardena corridor after a few too many hands of Texas Hold ‘Em at the Hustler Casino, there is surely no better place for bbq than Jay Bee’s BBQ, a teensy almost triangular island in the middle of what apparently seems to be nowhere. The stand looks like it could pop up off a dirt road in a rural, back roads tour of central Texas. Blink and you’ll surely miss it. The proprietors of Jay’s seem to have a certain familial relationship to the long-standing Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ in Memphis, which is always a welcome sign. The take-out menus sport the logo of Neely’s famed anthropomorphic porcine cartoon. Little does he know that the hungry hordes are about to descend upon and devour him and his brethren. Jay Bee’s set itself apart from Phillip’s due to actual available seating on the premises. The seating is limited to a few token wrought-iron tables on the outside patio where you bus the tables and wipe off excess sauce on your behalf. The menu comprises the usual delicious suspects of pork or beef ribs, links, chicken, and a pulled pork sandwich. The beef ribs drowning in bbq sauce takes on more sweetness than the intricate sauce doled out at Phillip’s across town. But it will suffice in a pinch.

Another shack that reinforces it’s old participation in the lumber business back in rural Louisiana is J n J Burger and BBQ, on Adams near Culver City, but situated more in the southern reaches of the Fairfax district. The proprietor houses a takeout burger counter on one side of the stand and a bbq operation on the other. Others also swear by their chili and pastrami burgers, but we can only attest to the greatest of the cue side of the deal. Just tap the bell on the counter, and usually Jay will appear and take care of you. BBQ is served here with a thin, though spicy sauce. The sauce lacks the complexity of a Phillip’s or Jay Bee’s, but the wood smoke embedded in J n J’s ribs makes itself known. He also prices his meals considerably below the competition so please do make use of an extra side of collard greens or mac ‘n cheese or one of his mom’s crushingly beautiful slices of sweet potato pie. That is when she’s still up to the challenge of meeting Jay’s demands. Staring at the logs of wood, chopped, and stacked over a story high, there simply can be no better place to contemplate the virtues of some woodsy cue. It doesn’t hurt that Jay’s lays claim to some of the best baked beans in all of South LA too.

My blog covers all things restaurants in the Los Angeles area from tiny taco shacks ( a la the James Beard award-winning Yuca’s Hut on Hillhurst) to great Southern BBQ stands (like Phillip’s BBQ on Crenshaw) to Vegetarian Indian jonts (such as Triphphai Bhimas) to Cal-French sit-down restaurants (like Fraiche in Culver City and Joe’s in Venice).

There are many restaurants to visit and so little time.  Here’s where you’ll find the best of the best depending on location, price, taste, and sometimes atmosphere.  Sometimes for some a cheap, delicious, hole in the wall will just not do.

Jump right in and listen avidly and get hungry.  Because it’s going to be a wonderful ride, or journey of the gastronomic kind.

Whatever you call it, let’s just eat.

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