I love LA. I love LA. I love LA. Where once I thought that if I lived in the United States I would for sure live in NYC, I now think it’s LA, it’s all LA.
For every reason that everyone else seems to not like the place, I love it. I love the flatness, I love the expansiveness (one could read that as expensiveness but heck I live in London ok), I love the urban sprawl.
I love the bleached blonde wanna be starlets (ok I don’t love them per se, but they amuse me), I love that everyone’s an actor, I love the bigness that is LA.
And just to make my not-being-in-LA-ness suck even more, I feel like I’ve made some friends there, people who I catch up with on my trips and who eat with me and dude, they even take photos of their food with me… {heart}
So, almost a tradition now, last Friday night I dined with Esther, Sook and Sarah at Izaka-ya by Katsu-ya, gorging ourselves on scrumptious toro and itsy bitsy glasses of sake (that were regularly refilled, mind you).
Izaka-ya by Katsu-ya is part of the Katsu-ya Group of restaurants, the healthily nurtured child of master sushi chef, Katsuya Uechi. I hadn’t heard of any of his restaurants before, but Sarah mentioned she loved this place (and um, if you check out her blog, you’ll see how much she loves to eat) so going there was a no brainer.
And I have to say, aside from the initial hiccup with the service (we’d made a reservation but because we weren’t all there on time they gave our table to a group in the ever growing queue, but we sat pretty much immediately once the whole party showed up) Izaka-ya by Katsu-ya did not disappoint.
We started with the kinkan (kumquat) halibut carpaccio, sliced so ridiculously thin that you can barely see the thing. The kinkan added an interesting zest to the sweet, soft halibut, as did the slice of miniature tomato. And the coriander? Well, I removed that mighty quickly cos I know that tastes vile.
Off the sashimi menu we also ordered a serve of toro (fatty tuna, always good) and ok, let the hate mail begin, some blue fin tuna. Yes I did say blue.
The toro was faultless as it usually is, the fatty tuna so juicy and dissolving on contact with my tastebuds. And the blue fin tuna, well, ok so blue fin is meant to taste better than yellow fin right? And so that’s why it’s a delicacy in Japan and gets fished a little too extensively, right?
Right. It’s all true ~ the blue fin tuna sashimi was better than any other tuna sashimi I’ve had and though there is the stigma that eating blue fin is a big no-no, I have to say, if farmed correctly, these babies are the bomb. The bomb.
Another hit from the menu was the scallop sashimi, served on individual spoons on a slice of radish (and something tangy, which I’ve completely forgotten) and topped with a tiny drop of uni. I’m not a big fan of uni (sea urchin) so Esther got a double serve but the scallop. The scallop. Fat, juicy, sweet, fresh, heavenly. What more can I say?
Ok, what I can say is that the goodness did not stop at the scallops.
We also had a pot of steamed asari clams, which I’ve now learnt is really easy to make! Well, “easy to make” is relative isn’t it because I’m sure mine won’t taste half as flavoursome as what we had at Izaka-ya by Katsu-ya. The soup was so tasty that we improvised with our scallop spoons, but some smart person went one better and dug in with the enormous serving spoon. All class
And the awesomeness is still not over. My favourite, and I think everyone’s favourite dish of the night (we ordered this twice) was the seared toro with crispy spinach. Where have I been? I have not ever had this dish before and seriously? I may move to LA just for this.
I mean, firstly – toro. We’ve already established that toro is genius. And then the crispy spinach, like crazy-potato-chip-crispy spanich. And then cooked with a big handful of garlic. It was hands down the winning dish, yes, over the clams and all of the sashimi. A greens dish wins. Am I getting old or what?
Sadly, all the dishes weren’t fabulous but honestly, they were up against some pretty stiff competition. We ordered the baby lobster roll thinking.. I don’t actually know what we were thinking, but what we got were shrimp (which ok, they kinda look like baby lobters) but not even that, there were only minuscule pieces of shrimp and a-whole-lotta mushrooms.
We also ended the meal with a serve of okinawa yakisoba which, I have to preface my commentary, I haven’t had before. So maybe it’s meant to taste the way it tasted, but I thought it was far too peppery, and not in a good cracked pepper way but a powdery processed pepper way. Like I said, I don’t actually know what I’m talking about so don’t hold it against them.
Needless to say that the night as a whole was a raging success. We talked and laughed and gossiped and drank and… dragged our butts to Milk for a multi-coloured dessert. Big thanks to Sarah, Esther and Sook for being brilliant company and while I’m at it, also a big hug to Danny and Nguyen (and Esther again) for entertaining me the next day.
I love these guys and I’ve pledged to eat at Nguyen’s soon to open restaurant in LA by the end of this year so… guess I’ll just have to try and get my butt back there
Izaka-ya by Katsu-ya
8420 West 3rd Street,
Los Angeles, CA, 90048
(323) 782 9536
website
