Over the course of the last few years, I’ve seen a bunch of “tapas” joints open up in Los Angeles. The term tapas has a pretty loose interpretation around here. In LA, it can mean any place that serves a selection of tiny appetizers. Some sushi restaurants go so far as to label themselves as Japanese tapas bars. This isn’t the kind of tapas I’m looking for… I’m looking for the real stuff… a place where the tapas menus resembles those of say a tapas bar in Barcelona. The tapas of Spanish cuisine consists of either hot or cold dishes. The dishes can be as small as a plate of olives, or as elaborate as seasoned seafood.

A couple months back I had dinner at Cobras and Matadors which is a Spanish restaurant on the corner of Hollywood and Vermont. A large selection of tapas dishes are on the menu, including squid rings, fried potatoes, lentils, and Iberian pork. The food there was reasonably good, but was not as authentic as I had hoped. The setting is rather trendy, and doesn’t resemble the relaxed, food-oriented tapas bars of Barcelona or Madrid.

This weekend I found what I was looking for. La Espanola Meats Inc, is a dodgy looking place in La Habra off the 110 freeway, but serves some of the most authentic and tastiest Spanish food in Los Angeles. From the outside it looks like a deserted warehouse, in an industrial area south of Carson. I pulled up to the parking lot, not knowing what to expect. “where the hell are we?” I wondered… but I was reassured by the collection of Mercedes and BMWs parked in the lot with bumper stickers featuring a large letter (E) or (CAT). This place is a Saturday afternoon hangout of local Spaniards and Catalonians living in Los Angeles. La Espanola Meats is primarily a tiny market selling Spanish goods, but also features a little eating area for food prepared there. The highlight of the place is the special Saturday Afternoon paella which they prepare in-house, once a week. [Paella is a traditional rice dish served in a large pan with vegetables and seafood]

So, I parked, and walked in to be greeted in Spanish by those working inside. They figured I’m probably Spanish, but the remnants (or lack thereof) my three years of shitty Providence High School Spanish education convinced them otherwise. Continuing in English, I asked for a couple orders of paella. Apparently, you’re supposed to make reservations to be served paella here, because they make only a small amount every week. Luckily for me, and with a bit of chatting, I appealed to the sympathy of the restaurant crew, and I got my orders of paella. It would take a couple minutes to serve though, so I spent the next few minutes browsing the shop.

They have an area dedicated to imported Spanish potables, including Red Wine, White Wine and Rosé Red Wine (which the Spanish are known for). The store also sells bottled Sangria, of the brand name Sangria Reál. Good sangria is hard to come by, and the crap they sell at Trader Joes doesn’t quite taste like the stuff in Spain. I figured I’d may as well pick up a couple bottles of this, and a couple bottles of the rose wine to bring home. The shop features a large selection of Spanish foods, including boquerones—a favorite of mine, which are white silver-backed anchovies in vinegar and olive oil. (I consider boquerones of the top 5 tastiest things to eat in the world).

“Sir, your orders are ready” I heard from the end of the shop. I figured two orders of paella wouldn’t be enough for the four of us having lunch… what else should I get?

Hanging along a wall of the restaurant were full hams of Iberian pork, with the leg sticking out. The Spanish are known to be ham connoisseurs, and Jamon Iberico is their flagship product, but they had none of it in stock at the time of my visit.

So I asked for four orders of the Jamon Serrano sandwich, which are served on baguettes, plain, with a little bit of olive oil drizzled over it.
With a round of lemon Kas Soda, the woman at the register tallied up the total, and we anxiously relocated to the adjacent covered eating area, featuring a bunch of picnic tables, and many hungry people. Luckily there was an open table up front and that’s where we sat down….

First, we have the Serrano ham baguettes, which are great. The ham resembles prosciutto ham and has a very distinct taste. At this point, I haven’t even looked at the paella, but I can smell it, and the anticipation is almost too much to handle. I opened up the box, and there it was. Nearly indistinguishable from the paella I had in Spain a couple years back, this dish had everything good paella should have: Shrimp, Squid rings, Clams, and all kinds of shellfish. To say the least, it was very tasty.

So, we ate, cleaned up the table, and left the restaurant. Leaving the parking lot, I knew that I’d return someday very soon.

The only problem with this place, other than its appearance, is its location. It’s about 20 miles south of USC on the 110, and there is nothing else to do in the area….So when coming to eat here, the trip has to be planned with this as the only destination…. But if you’re into good food, it’s definitely worth it…

A couple side notes:
The new whole foods in pasadena now features a tapas/wine bar on the second floor with some Spanish dishes. I haven’t eaten there yet, but it looks pretty good. In the gourmet food section, you can ask for imported boquerones (Spanish white anchovies), which they sell by the pound. The ones from Whole Foods are just as good as the ones in Spain because, well, they ARE the ones from Spain. Good stuff. Unfortunately though, they don’t carry Serrano ham because the ham is preserved with Nitrates, which Whole Foods doesn’t support.

For Serrano ham closer to home, Nicole’s Gourmet Foods on Mission Street (cross street fair oaks), sells imported Iberian ham at about $20 a pound. (They even serve prosciutto ham from Parma, and Mortadella by the pound)

Buen Apetito

Here in the developed world, there’s usually not much else to choose from. Occasionally, lamb is on the menu, and we eat turkey twice a year. For the more adventuresome, there’s this other stuff called “seafood”… oooh

I’m bored of it.

Don’t get me wrong… Beef still has a special place in my heart. I’m just looking for something different.

So I set off to find something different.

Okay, so when we eat chicken, we’re limited to either breast or leg. But, believe it or not, there are other parts to a chicken which are indeed edible. There’s a type of Japanese dish called Yakitori. Literally Yakitori translates to “skewered chicken.”

A favorite of mine, Honda-Ya restaurant on the third floor of Mistsuwa Market in Little Tokyo, is known for its selection of skewered chicken. A paper menu (like a sushi menu) is left on the table with a list of orders they serve. The menus are not exclusively limited to chicken-skewers; there are skewered vegetables, mushrooms, and even lamb chops to choose from. I start off with a couple of these mushroom and asparagus skewers in some sort of marinade.

The most basic type of yakitori is labeled simply as “white meat” on the menu.
I thought, “White meat? boring…..”
surprisingly though, these were much tastier than i thought.
The x-factor is a tiny amount of wasabi that they spread over the chicken. Who knew? Chicken + Wasabi

Next up, chicken liver—a poor man’s foie gras. Two livers are brought on a skewer. The taste is somewhat more gamey, but good nonetheless.
How about some chicken heart? Chicken gizzard? And last but not least, crunchy chicken skin…

One interesting thing about Japanese cuisine (and true about most other cultures as well) is that they don’t like to waste food. Internal organs are very much an integral part of their diet. Good stuff.

Moving on…
Squab is a common dish at Chinese restaurants. What the hell is squab?

At Hop-Li Chinese restaurant in Chinatown on Alpine street, there is a dish known as “squab” on the menu.

Inquiring from our friendly waiter, we realized that squab is the name of the meat of Pigeons… yeah… those same fucking birds that crap all over the place and fiend for your sandwich crumbs…. Yes, pigeons are used in Chinese cuisine.
I wasn’t able to order that, but I’m probably going to go back sometime this or next week to try it. I hear it tastes like chicken (not surprising…)

However, there was one thing on the menu that I was able to try—jellyfish. Funny how it tastes like neither jelly nor fish. If anything it tastes more like nothing with the texture of cabbage. These little critters were brought out on a plate, mixed with a plethora of different vegetables, and topped with an overpowering sesame-based sauce. If you don’t mind the crunchy texture, it’s definitely something to try.
I would go into detail about the other dishes at this restaurant, but they’re not bizarre enough….

On a side note, this Hop-Li restaurant has a B rating. For those of you who freak out when you see a restaurant with something other than an A, here’s a little rating scale I’ve heard regarding Chinese restaurants.

-A stands for “Americans Only” ….. The food is generally mediocre, and less authentic. It attracts a mainstream crowd. It’s chinese food for people who don’t like chinese food. Prime example: Panda Express (which i loathe)
-B stands for “Best” …. These are the real Chinese restaurants to be eating at, because they do maintain a level of sanitation, as well as stick to authenticity. Rule of thumb: if there is food stuck to your fork, simple ask for a new one.
-C stands for “Chinese Only” …. If you’re chinese and living in chinatown, this is a place for you. Othwise, it’s better to avoid these places and allow its local clientele to eat there. The food might be phenomenal, but may lead you to end the night with your head in the toilet.

I’m getting tired of writing this thing, so i’m going to write about one more bizarre food….

In Louisiana, the Cajun culture has a very distinct type of cuisine. The usual meat sources may be hard to come by by the Bayou, so the locals feed on animals we’d otherwise consider strange.

Of all places, the Grove on Fairfax is next to a farmer’s market consisting of a section of tiny clustered restaurants. One particular restaurant there is the Cajun restaurant (I don’t remember the name of it) . It’s towards the covered area with the seating area and the bar. At this place, they serve fried gator….. Fried Alligator, that is. How intimidating it must seem.

At a glance, these fried bits of alligator meat are indistinguishable from pop-corn chicken at KFC. The white meat is little firmer, but it tastes just like chicken (no shit), with a hint of some other strange flavor. The meat is a little tougher to chew though but tastes good.

Here are the places again if you wish to check it out
Honda-Ya Yakitori: on the corner of 3rd and Alameda in Little Tokyo, on the 3rd floor of the market
Hop-Li Chinese: on alpine street in Chinatown, a few blocks west of Broadway
the Cajun place at the farmer’s market: at the grove on the corner of 3rd/Fairfax…

Bon Appétit

I just got back from New York and i had the oppertunity to try FUGU- or poisonous tiger blowfish (what is fugu? See blog #4)

On Christmas day my brother and I ventured to Restaurant Nippon in Manhattan on the corner of Park and 53rd… This place is known as the first sushi bar to ever open in new York, and also has a special FDA license to serve poisonous pufferfish. And so, given the opportunity, on Christmas Day I decided to go risk my life to try this deadly delicacy.. i’m not exactly the world’s greatest christian, so i hoped God wasn’t going to unleash his fury on me on this day….

Asking to be seated at the bar, I immediately I asked to see the fugu menu which prompted a bit of attention from the sushi bar staff…
With an FDA license, it’s gotta be safe,…. right? I was almost certain it would be a good cut, and that I’d survive dinner. I had no doubt in my mind….
So they brought out a plate of fugu sashimi, a bowl of ponzu sauce, some hot sauce, and some greens (I don’t know what kind… they look like thin green onions)
This was gonna be easy… all that would happen is a bit of numbing of the mouth, and it’d be alright..

So, with a final mental reassurance, the fugu met my mouth….
It’s crunchy, almost like chewing that ginger they give you at a sushi bar…. It doesn’t really have much of a taste… and if it did, it’s masked by the sauce

So my brother beside me took his share of the fugu at the same time, and we sat there, anticipating “Novocain-like numbing”

……nothing
Hmm? Time for another piece? We had a couple more pieces of fugu sashimi, and a slight bit of numbing was felt in the mouth.
And then it happened. It hit me out of nowhere and left me wondering….. I felt a strange psychoactive effect, almost like a mental disassociation from my body… I was fully conscious yet somewhat delirious….
The effect wasn’t too powerful, but it was definitely noticeable. Was I psyching myself out? Was this placebo? It had to be.. I was more than sure that the fish I had was good….
I tried to get my mind off of it, and drank a bit of the ice tea in front of me…. Then I looked to my left, at my brother. He had a very familiar smile on his face as he looked at me…. Not a smile of joy, but the smile that says “oh shit, can you believe this is happening?” ….
With a confused smile on my face, I ask “hey kid…. Are you starting to feel something?”
To which he responds laughing, “I think I’m feeling kinda weird”

at this point, I had come to the conclusion that I would be dead within a few minutes

anxiety struck
I began to shiver, and I felt numbness all over my body…
There was a strange prickly numbness radiating down into my body from my mouth to the ends of my fingertips…
My face was flushed and I was sweating…. I look to my left as my brother is unbuttoning a couple buttons of his shirt to allow some airflow ..
A psychoactive hangover-like disassociated feeling took over my consciousness as I sat there, delirious, wondering whether or not we had eaten a poorly cut pufferfish… was I dying? Was this the end?
But then again, I thought of the statistics, and about the FDA license these guys had…. There’s no way I had a lethal dose of the poison.. I decided to take the route of Denial….
Was I dying? Of course not… hah, there is nothing worse than near-death anxiety… I had to get my mind off of it…. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe….
Or was it?

I wanted to know exactly what the symptoms were of tetradoxin poisoning were…. I tried to ask the sushi chef, but he didn’t speak a word of English… the waitress serving us had no idea what I was talking about… Was there nobody to reassure me that I’d survive this thing?

We sat and waited…. To get my mind off of the hell I was experiencing, I ordered a couple pieces of safe sushi (namely some toro and halibut)… These were brought out, but tasted like nothing, since I had lost the sense of taste…

About twenty minutes had gone by since I first had the fugu, and I was still alive [what a relief], but I was certain that I had ingested at least a little bit of this poison. I was taking increasingly heavier breaths and feeling weaker by the minute…
We stayed at the sushi bar for another ten minutes and paid the check, leaving behind the rest of the fugu, walking out into the freezing-cold streets of midtown manhattan.

On the walk back to the hotel, some of the effects began to fade, but a hangover-like after effect lingered….
I could not sleep that night. I lay in bed having strange semi-conscious dreams of weird unsolvable puzzles, spontaneously twitching every hour or so..
the next day I had a slight hangover for a large portion of the day, but that too went away.
It sucked. But I survived

Now that I look back, I’m really glad I had fugu. It was a hell of an experience. I had a non-lethal dose of an lethal neurotoxic poison in my system, and I survived to tell about it.. Whether or not the sushi chef had incorrectly prepared the fish, I won’t really know. I know that the flesh still contains trace amounts of the poison, and the fish I had may have had an unusually high concentration of Tetradoxin.

I’m glad that it’s all over, but I surely do not regret having the fugu…. Given the opportunity, I probably would never do it again, and most certainly I would not recommend fugu to anyone else.

But then again, if you feel daring, it may just be worth it.

x

here’s  the little fucker… alive

…and dead

poisoned and delirious in front the restaurant

——————————————

and the video:

Bring it to a boil, then leave it to simmer, covered until it soaks up the water…

Here we have Sushi-grade Albacore tuna from Fish King in Glendale…

i’m making two cuts to to sear and a couple cuts to serve as sushi/sashimi

This is where i sear the edges of the Albacore for about 1-2 seconds, leaving the inside very rare.

The rice is then mixed with a tiny amount of rice vinegar and a pinch of salt/sugar….

I made these balls of rice in my palm, topping it with a bit of wasabi….

Here are some of the cuts of Albacore placed over the rice… These will be topped with green onions and some citrus-soy ponzu sauce…

with some of the seared Albacore, i decided to make a “salad” with green onions and ponzu sauce….

Seared albacore sashimi..

The stuff on the left is the more fatty part of the fish…

Complete: Albacore Sushi

Enough of albacore… how about some Yellow Tail?

Here’s the Yellow Tail Sushi, prepared pretty much the same way as the Albacore, except without ponzu sauce… This will be used with soy sauce….

Too much fish.. How about some greens?

This is a cucumber salad…. after dicing it, i mixed in two Tablespoons of Rice vinegar and a lot of that japanese dressing. I don’t know what’s in it, nor do i really care.. but it does taste good.

Complete: Cucumber Salad

No Sushi meal is complete without miso soup. (from a packet, with boiling water)
I’m not gonna make this from fresh ingredients…. it takes too long

Tonight’s Dinner

…almost forgot… the sake

Raw fish…… the thought of eating a dead, uncooked fish scares away many.

Haunting visions of the goldfish won as a kid at third-grade school fair appear… of the day you found it floating, dead in the jar….

Chewing on raw fish must seem absolutely horrific…

At one point in time, some people will overcome their fear of trying sushi and end up acquiring a liking for it…

“but wait…. isn’t it unsafe to eat uncooked things? can’t you get sick from bacteria and microbes living in the fish?”….

i suppose, to some extent, technically it IS safer to eat cooked fish… but then again, you don’t hear of many people being hospitalized because of bad fish… i mean, come on…. if it’s really that unsafe, why are there so many sushi restaurants in LA? Ever driven down Ventura Boulevard? There are at least two dozen places serving raw fish on that street alone…. Sushi is HUGE is Japan… and the Japanese live the healthiest lifestyles on earth and have the longest average life expectancy of any country..

“…but wait, you said that eating raw fish does increase your chances of food poisoning…” …..
YES it does… especially if you eat sushi a couple times a week, chances are you will [probably] someday end up with your head in the toilet……… you know, the whole ordeal of body aches, loss of appetite, vomiting and all that other good stuff….

food poisoning does suck, but the bottom line is that you will survive….

okay………… the topic of tonight’s food blog is fugu.

What the fuck is fugu and why did i read that lame rant about the safety of sushi?

Fugu is the japanese name for Pufferfish (also known as Blowfish or Porcupinfish). It is often served raw as a delicacy.

but there’s a catch…… Fugu qualifies as the world’s most dangerous food.

By danger i don’t mean risking infection or food poisoning… Illegal in most countries, Pufferfish contains lethal amounts of the poison known as tetrodoxin, which is a neurotoxic chemical that puts cyanide to shame. Human consumption of this poison will paralyze the muscles, leaving the unfortunate fellow in a fully conscious but paralyzed state until he dies of asphyxiation…… not a pleasant sight.

In the pufferfish, only the liver and the ovaries contain this poison… the rest of the fish is perfectly safe to eat…..

In japan, a special license is required to serve fugu. To get this license chefs have to complete a three year training program where they learn the correct way to cut the fish to avoid releasing the poison… However, accidents can happen. One hundred people die each year in japan from badly prepared pufferfish.

Most of the fugu in the world is consumed in Japan, but a small share of it is exported to the United States.. as of 2005, there are about a dozen places in the entire US that have FDA permits to serve Fugu, with most of them located in New York….

This thing qualifies as the world’s most dangerous food…… Trying this is like playing a game of “Japanese Roulette.” To add to the excitement, there is no known antidote.

Knowing the dangers of Fugu, who the hell would wanna risk trying it?

hah

This afternoon, I called to confirm reservation at Restaurant Nippon in Manhattan. On Christmas Day they expect to serve a special order of Fugu Sashimi.

From what i hear, the taste of Fugu sashimi is quite mild, and ponzu sauce is generally poured onto it to give it flavor…If served correctly, the sashimi is cut to contain tiny amounts of the poison, which will cause a Novocain-like numbing of the mouth and tongue… If cut incorrectly, well… you know the story….

to be continued…. (maybe)

So I hear all this hype about New York pizza……. about how it’s so much better than the garbage they have here…. well, i’ve been on a quest to find the best pizza in Los Angeles, and i think i found the spot…

It’s a tiny place on La Cienega called Vito’s Pizza.. These guys are originally from Italy, and used to own a pizza place on Vermont a couple years back. When you walk into this place, there’s a counter where you order your pizza, and next to it there’s a little dine-in area with a maximum capacity of around six people…. next to the counter is a window displaying the restaurant’s most popular pizzas…

they sell by either the slice or the whole pie. I decided to order three (rather large) slices this time… I got one slice of the Terra Ferma, which is almost like a vegetarian pizza with added pepperoni and sausage… really tasty…. but, the best pizza at Vito’s is the simplest pizza… there is no barbecue sauce on this, no chicken, no pinapple, no pesto….. NO……. it doesn’t get much simpler than the classic margarita pizza.

ingredients:
Dough, Sauce, Mozzerella, Fresh Tomatoes (and maybe some Basil in there somewhere)

if you go to europe and ask for pizza, this is probably what you’ll get….. at vito’s the pizza isn’t as thin as its european counterparts, but it does qualify as a “thin crust” pizza.
at the suggestion of Paul, the guy on the Vito’s Pizza menu, i usually ask for a bit of fresh garlic to be sprinkled over the pizza…. (remember, it’s garlic, so don’t schedule your long-overdue dental work to be done on the day you order this)….

anyone that bites into this pizza will notice how phenomenal it is.
the crispiness of the crust, taste of the tomato sauce, and quality cheese make this pizza nearly perfect. one thing i’ve noticed about Vito’s pizzas is that they distribute the ingredients of the pizza equally throughout the pizza… what i mean is that there is exactly the same amount of each ingredient (sauce/cheese/pepperoni/olives…) in each bite
every bite is equally excellent.

the setting is pretty cool too…. since these guys are from italy, i occasionally overhear telling stories about “when i was i kid back in rome…” just to keep it authentic, i tend to order a Peroni with my pizza, or if i don’t feel like having beer, i’ll get a bottle of Acqua Panna.

Since the first time i came here about a year ago, i’ve returned about a dozen times… i originally heard about this place on the forums of chowhound.com where the consensus is that it’s the best place to have pizza in los angeles.
after eating here, i’d rather be starved than to be forced to eat delivery pizza….
checkout their menu at vitopizza.com

———

… i’m gonna be in new york in about two weeks, and i’m looking forward to trying DiFara’s Pizza in Brooklyn, which supposedly has the best pizza in the entire world…

I’d been looking forward to this for quite sometime. I had missed the orange county Swedish fest two weeks ago, and this would be my last chance to experience Scandinavia in LA until next april….

We got to the shrine around 1PM and went right in through the entrance to be welcomed by women in their traditional Scandinavian outfits. A bunch of vendors had setup shop inside the auditorium selling all sorts of Swedish knickknacks and souvenir shit…. I hadn’t come to buy useless crap to leave on my already-cluttered desk; i was here primarily for the food….
Swedish food… hmm… what could it be? i always figured it would be stuff like waffles and fish… i guess i was partially correct, but i found a couple interesting things to eat…
the central vendor was selling this poison called “glogg”. this stuff is basically a hot mulled wine made of all sorts of spices, red wine, port and brandy… it’s potent stuff…….. very tempting…. but, we hadn’t had anything to eat yet… glogg would have to wait…

Arriving with an empty stomach, my brother (the tagalong) and i decided to grab some breakfast… We bought a plate of pastries including chocolate cake, gingerbread cookies and a roulette cake-kind-of-thing…. this stuff was all good and uninteresting… but… there was one thing that was quite good…….

Meet Semla

This thing looked like a hollowed out bread bowl gone cream puff….. Had it been just that, it wouldn’t have been all that interesting… but the X factor of this thing is that it’s filled with marzipan cream…… It’s got an almond paste-based cream inside which tasted so much better than its boring original counterpart….

So we grabbed one of these and a cup of Swedish black coffee (which is basic black coffee that has the words “Made in Sweden” on the label)…. and that was breakfast…

So after we devoured breakfast five minutes into arriving, we began planning lunch….. the good thing about a fast metabolism is that i can eat whatever i want whenever i want, and still be hungry within a couple seconds…. yeah, good stuff…

ten minutes into arrival, breakfast was over, we began our quest to find lunch….

there weren’t very many choices and drinking glogg seemed like the most appealing option… but we ultimately decided to do a sampler platter…. what i mean by this is, my brother and i each picked up one course and split it two ways….. He got the baby-shrimp open-face sandwich, and i got the plate of meatballs and mashed potatoes

to sum it up, the meatballs were decent and the sandwich had too much mayo…… we washed it down with some Julmust, the traditional holiday soft drink of Swedish, which tastes basically like Jack&Coke minus the alcohol. It tastes pretty good…. Closest thing i can think of is that special Pepsi holiday spice blend they have around Christmastime.. this stuff outsells Coke in Sweden in the holiday season.

okay we had been there for about 20 minutes and had breakfast and lunch… we decided we ought to go browse for a bit to digest the truckload of food we just devoured before picking up some glogg…
they had lots of miniature wooden figurines things for sale, along with other crap you’d find in tourist traps in the Stockholm airport…. the only decent section was the imported food section which had all sorts of imported Scandinavian chocolates, candy bars, drinks and other treats…. at the suggestion of some Swedish woman, i picked up whatever she believed was good. i took her word for it and bought a couple overpriced chocolate bars and licorice sticks… on a side note, I have to say that Swedish, or scandivian girls in general, are gorgeous…. really…. so, i entered a lottery to win tickets to Sweden (which i have not since heard from)

so we got tired of browsing and picked up two cups of glogg…. and wow is this stuff potent…. it’s not potent like vodka or any kind of spirit…. it’s more because it’s served hot… it’s like drinking warm wine with a slightly higher alcohol content…. inside these cups they had placed (i think) an almond and a raisin… i’m not sure if it was exactly these two things, but i was sure that i wasn’t going stick my fingers into my cup to dig them out… but i can assure you it was some sort of nut and a dried fruit…. as the glogg cooled off it became increasingly easier to drink…. we stood there and watched some Swedish Christmas pageant up on the stage while enjoying the rest of the drink…. overall a great experience….

i can’t wait until the next Scandinavian festival, which is gonna be in Thousand oaks on April 19-20…

until then, you can pick up glogg (or a non-alcoholic pre-glogg) from your local ikea..

skål

I’ve been looking for quality sushi in Los Angeles for quite some time and I think i’ve found a great spot.

First, let me tell you about what the Chowhound consensus holds as the “best” place for sushi in LA– It’s this place called Urasawa on the corner of Wilshire and Rodeo, on the second floor of that new complex they’ve built. That place is also the most expensive restaurant in Los Angeles with the average cost for food per person at about $300. I’ve never been there, and i don’t think i’m quite ready to eat there.

So i’ve been looking for something more affordable………
Welcome to Nozawa, home of the “sushi nazi” as he is known–Chef Nozawa. This guy is a true master of sushi; this guy is also a true asshole according to legend.

Nozawa is a dinky little place on Ventura blvd between the blocks of Vineland and Tujunga. It’s in a crowded little shopping center next to a nail salon. They have a fairly ugly restaurant setup with a couple cheap-looking tables and a bar with room for six. One thing you will notice when you walk in is the lack of decor and an abundance of signs all over the wall that have the words “TRUST ME” inscribed. Why? What does this mean?….. Well, first and formost, there are no menus and prices are not listed anywhere. If you want to eat at the bar, you will have to order “Omakase” which is Japanese for “it’s up to you.” This essentially means you have no choice in the ordering process. The sushi chef decides to give you whatever he wants, at whatever rate he wants, and will charge you however much he wants for it.

There is no salad here, miso soup served, and the fish is limited to maybe six or seven different kinds. Rumor has it that if you order a california roll here, you will be kicked out immediately. [A couple months back Charlize Theron was said to have been kicked out of this place.] To add to the excitement, this particular sushi chef isn’t exact the world’s friendliest person. He tells you exactly what to eat, and how to eat it. He tells you how much soy sauce to use, or not use at all. Nozawa will dictate your every move while you are sitting at his bar, and if you fail to follow his instructions, you will be told to “GET OUT”. Yeah, no joke..

So I walk into this place to be stared at four men in their traditional chef apparel. I ask to sit at the bar, at which point one of the men informs me that if i decide to sit there is “no choice”…. I agree and get seated, eagerly awaiting whatever is to come….. mmm

i’m with my tag-along, the brother, whom i have informed about the place and its associated etiquette…. (we try to remember that no food–not even rice–should be wasted and that soy sauce should be used sparingly on the master chef’s courses….)
first course…. a big bowl of tuna sashimi with green onions in ponzu sauce ……. this was excellent… some of the freshest fish i’ve had in a while…
even before we devour this, the second course is handed to us…… a plate of toro (fatty tuna) and hamachi (yellowtail) sushi…… great
next up, a plate of albacore which we are instructed to eat without soy sauce, followed by a pair of hand rolls with real crab… …. it is pretty unusual for a sushi place to serve real crab in their rolls, but Nozawa is dedicated to freshness
next up, a toro (tuna) hand roll, with the softest tuna i have ever had in my entire life… this fish melted in my mouth almost immediately….
next up, a rather unusual preparation of halibut sushi….. he had sprinkled fresh curry power and poured sweet ponzu sauce over the fish giving it a very spicy yet semi sweet flavor…. being a big fan of halibut, this was probably the highlight dish…
he then hands us some sort of sushi i had never had… he mumbles something to me along the lines of “black cod” although i’m not sure if that’s what i ate… it was quite good with a slightly chewier texture…. i wouldn’t want to upset the sushi nazi by asking too many questions, so i just shut up and eat it… quite tasty

finallly, he figures we’re getting full and asks if we want more…. we ask for one more order, which was an order of japanese eel…. it was a little different from the usual freshwater eel that i get, as it was a bit lighter in color and extremely soft…. this, again melts in my mouth….
i pound my asahi and ask for the check…. it came out a little pricey at about $70 a person, but it was sure as hell worth it
as we walk out of the restaurant, we say thank you, and Nozawa himself reciprocates with another “thank you” and a tiny nod….. This is a good sign, which means that you gain his approval… if he feels as though you are there to waste food, he will either kick you our or ignore you as you step out..

This place is quite possibly the most NO-BULLSHIT, straight-out-quality-sushi place in los angeles. He takes his sushi very seriously and expects his customers to do so as well…. It has a Zagat rating of 28 of 30 under the food category which is higher than any other establishment in Los Angeles….. this is quality food.