Kinokawa’s Spider Roll
The spider roll is one of those concoctions like fried ice cream, the California Roll or powdered wasabi, which you suspect (or hope) doesn’t exist outside Japanese restaurants in the United States. (And yes: like ginger, wasabi is a root best served freshly grated.) But it almost always tastes so good that you [...]

Every plate is a small one at Izakaya Zero, but some are more suited to a start than others. And for the best possible beginning there’s the okonomiyaki, a Japanese-style pancake loaded with octopus, pork, cabbage, green onion, ginger and topped with scribbles of citrus aioli and tonkatsu sauce. But it’s the heartier dishes that [...]

Izakaya Zero balances bar food with grace

PHOTO by RICK POON
Before dark, Izakaya Zero seems a clinical place—the white walls and white menus and white chairs aren’t so much clean and modern as they are austere. But at night it transforms, shedding the orange shadows of sunset for some carefully controlled lighting, which hits all those [...]

Despite its variety, Anjin is a restaurant devoted to meat. Here, beef is the focus, with one of the best and most economical choices being the prime short rib. Like all of Anjin’s meats, the short rib is of excellent quality, cut thin into practically see-through slices that are obscured only by marbled ripples of [...]

Mitsuwa’s cherry blossom mochi
Head to Mitsuwa hungry and you’re bound to walk out with a week’s worth of food, pulled in first by the market’s perfect produce then lured back for a second spin by the inevitable impulse buys. On top of all that, there’s a full food court that supplies everything from restaurant-bettering ramen [...]

Surviving the seven deadly sins at Anjin

PHOTO by RICK POON
Dining at Anjin is a practice of patience, a lesson in how to temper your hunger while you wait at a place so perpetually packed that it logs hour-long lines 10 minutes after opening. But every eater at Anjin knows this. Some decide to kick around [...]

Sliding past the sushi bar at Koi

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Scoot up to the sushi bar at Koi and you begin a familiar ritual: figure out the day’s freshest fish, order a couple cuts and then snap your chopsticks apart, shaving away splinters until the things are whittled down to dull little spears. It’s a second-nature [...]

There are, of course, segregated sections of Kotosh’s menu that list distinctly Japanese and Peruvian dishes, but the best and most interesting offerings come from 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 [...]

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 [...]

The most appropriate dish for an izakaya like Musha is one charred at a tableside grill. And the most interesting of those is the dried stingray. The translucent triangles of flesh initially eat like a too-tough jerky inexplicably plucked from the sea. But give the pieces some grilling and a dunk in the accompanying aioli [...]