Beyond fusion with Kotosh’s transcontinental tastes

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

Kotosh seems like it is a world away, located a stuttering drive down PCH past tangles of pipes and smokestacks and into those worn-down blocks beyond the 710. But that’s only half the trip. The rest finishes up in Lomita, where palms shoot up from nearly every panel of concrete and the sky—blue as can be—hangs half-filled with Palos Verdes.

And so Kotosh, plain and stark as it is, feels a bit unfamiliar, a Japanese-Peruvian restaurant mere miles from Long Beach that somehow seems as though it could never sit within our borders.
Part of that disconnect derives from the restaurant’s seemingly odd fusion of Peruvian staples and sushi bar favorites. Yet while the menu can seem incongruous, this particular pairing is actually a natural one, informed by over a hundred years of Japanese immigration to Peru and more recently by the reign of Alberto Fujimori. But Kotosh’s fusion is even deeper and more elemental, as the restaurant takes its name from the site of some of Peru’s oldest ruins, a pre-Incan finding first excavated by a crew of Japanese scientists.

So it’s with an understanding of this shared history that Kotosh’s menu makes perfect sense, a multicultural marriage interpreted through cebiches and sashimi. There are, of course, segregated sections of the menu that list distinctly Japanese and Peruvian dishes, but the best and most interesting offerings come when Kotosh lets the two cuisines collide.

One of the best examples is the tiradito de atún, a Peruvian-style tuna sashimi that pays its respects to both ends of Kotosh’s menu. The dish is a neat one—lean cuts of tuna stacked pure and plain in a domino-like row—dressed with a lemon and soy sauce and topped with sesame seeds, scallions and bits of pepper—a subtle Peruvian compliment to the flawless fish.

In the same vein is the pulpo al olivo, ivory slabs of octopus scored by crisscrossed lines of a bojita olive sauce. The puplo al olivo certainly has more flavor than the tiradito de atún, but the octopus also hangs on to a tougher texture that’s sure to turn some away.

Most of Kotosh’s other excellent dishes—the chicharron mixto (a virtual party platter of fried seafood served swimming in a thick garlic sauce) and the salmon skin salad (shards of skin with radish sprouts, yamagobo, mixed greens, cucumber and bonito in a ponzu sauce)—do well by the restaurant’s dual citizenship. There are, however, a few plates that seem half-hearted, like the Machu Picchu roll. The roll is Peruvian mostly in name, as its mix of shrimp tempura and avocado topped with tuna, mayonnaise, garlic and lime has only the faintest of South American flavors—the garlic and lime (the likely bearers of Peruvian taste) are unfortunately masked by the dollop of mayonnaise resting atop each slice.

But by the time you swallow down the Machu Picchu roll, you’ll probably already be taken by Kotosh, happily chasing everything down with a swig of Cusqueña or Sapporo, maybe even a sip of chicha morada, a deep and sweet purple corn-based beverage that leads into one of Kotosh’s desserts: alfajor (a caramel shortbread cookie), crema volteada (Peruvian flan) and bite-sized balls of mochi, to name a few.

It’s when you savor your last sweet bites that you realize Kotosh’s success: Even if you were to erase one country from its cookbook, Kotosh would function just fine—better, in fact, than other restaurants that focus on a single cuisine. More remarkable is that the restaurant truly does work best with both, easily breaking the boundaries of typical fusion food. Kotosh, after all, is very much a restaurant of place, perfectly at home in its stucco strip mall, past all the warped markers of industry and well into a unique niche of Japanese-Peruvian food that’s far beyond gimmick.

KOTOSH 2408 LOMITA BLVD | STE C | LOMITA 90717 | 310.257.1363 | OPEN MON-THURS 11AM-2:30PM AND 4:30-9PM | FRI 11AM-2:30PM AND 4:30-10PM | AND SAT 11AM-10PM | FOOD FOR TWO $30-60

Tags: Food, japanese, kotosh, lomita, peruvian