For a while, I’ve been trying to eat healthier.  During my grocery shopping, I noticed this healthier soup by Campbell’s. 

“Healthy Request.” 98% fat free and 40% less sodium.

I don’t know who requested this, but it tastes 100% like crap.  The less sodium is bad enough but the 98% fat free makes this thing taste like plastic.  Plastic with no taste.  If I have to eat this crap to live a few years longer, I’d rather be dead earlier.

I’ve seen restaurants with “A” ratings that didn’t seem very clean to me.  Hope I don’t die from eating here.

Yuzando is located in the West LA Tokyo Row area on Sawtelle in the same building as the Shabu-Shabu place.  It used to be another sushi place and I guess it has changed owners and there’s a new temporary sign hanging on the building.  That’s always a bad sign when the owners don’t want to spend the bucks for a “real” sign.

The inside of this place looks almost the same as before but it’s been brightened and spruced up a little. The lighting on the wall next to the tables are way too bright and hurt my eyes.  But everything looks clean and updated.  So far, so good.

Other bloggers seem to like this place so I was looking foward to some great sushi.  My friend ordered her usual seaweed salad and although it looked small, she said it was good.  We both ordered the mixed sushi, mine for what was supposed to be under $20 on the menu, but came out $23.50 on the bill, and hers for $19.50.

The picture above is what was supposed to be the best mixed sushi on the menu.  No, it’s not a picture of something from Ralphs.  You can see from the unagi and even tuna, that this is not what it should look like.   For a comparison, see the picture from my Izayoi mixed sushi plate.  When sushi looks bad, it follows that it tastes bad.  The bait and switch on the pricing was bad enough, not to mention the small sized sushi, but I just don’t like bad sushi.  Period.

The only good news is the hot green tea was free.  Unfortunately, it comes in the smallest tea cup ever invented.  If you’re going to offer tea that small, you need an ultra attentive waitress to refill it every 5 minutes.  Unfortunately, no such luck here.  Stay away from this place.  I’m sure it’s not going to last very long anyway.  At least the owner saved money on the sign outside.

Yuzando – Sushi on Sawtelle
2004 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 473-2388

My friend and I have been coming to this place for many years but I haven’t been back in over a year.  The first thing I noticed was that it has been remodeled and now has a darker, sexier ambience.  The funiture also seems to be new but I’m not sure.

As we sat down, my heart sank when I realized the sexy Asian waitresses have been replaced by Asian waiters.  What’s this world coming to when you go to a Thai restaurant and they don’t have sexy Asian waitresses?  The end of Western Civilization is closer.  I’m not homophobic so I don’t care if the waiters are gay.  I just want to see some sexy girls.

I got over the lack of sexy waitresses situation and ordered my usual beef steak dish with a side of white rice. My friend ordered his usual fried rice thingie.  The picture above shows my plate. The dipping sauce was a lot spicier and less tasty than before, and worst of all, the steak was not the great marinated dish at all. In fact, the steak was barely edible.

Oh, the humanity.  One of my favorite Thai hang-out turns into a “pass” in just one year.  If they brought back the sexy Asian waitresses, I could overlook the bad food.  One can hope.

Tuk Tuk
8875 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035
(310) 860-1872
tuktukla.com
Saturday – Sunday: Noon – 11pm
Monday – Friday: 11am – 11pm

Decided to go back to Blue Marlin for another meal with my friend.  She had the Seafood Cream Pasta ($13.95) shown above and I had the Chilli something or rather with an egg on top ($11.95) which was very tasty.  Click on the thumbnail to the left to see a bigger version of it.

The pasta comes with a nice salad with some type of soy dressing which was good.  After we were finished with the meal, we couldn’t resist getting some bomb ass desert.

From left to right, my friend ordered the Tempura Geen Tea ice cream ($4.95), I got the Souffle ($5.95) and coffee in cool cup ($2).  My desert was great and I loved the cool cup for the coffee.  Sometimes the presentation makes things taste even better.

Blue Marlin Mistro
2121 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 445-2522
Sunday: 11:30am – 10pm, Monday – Thursday: 11:30am – 10:30pm, Friday – Saturday: 11:30pm – 11pm
Map

En Sushi is located on Santa Monica and Barry, near Federal.  The restaurant does have a tiny parking lot that the valet uses and there is a small public parking lot across Barry but they are usually packed because of all the other businesses nearby which also doesn’t have any parking.  But once you get inside, the ambience is relaxing, dark and mellow.

There’s a sushi bar and table and booth seating available.  There’s also a 5 person large booth towards the back as well as something upstairs, which I think is for private parties only.

We ordered an appetizer sampler ($13) which was a good way to see what they offered and it was pretty good.  The picture here (click for larger image) are the En Fusion roll ($10.50) and Diablo roll ($13).

We also ordered regular sushi, albacore ($4.75), octopus ($4.50), salmon ($4.75), scallop ($4.75), tuna ($4.95), which are slightly pricy for me but not for this type of upscale place.  Everything we ordered was fresh and prepared and presented well.

Come here for the ambience (and the price to go along with it), but be ready to have to valet park.

En Sushi
11651 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 477-1551
ensushi.com
Map

If you like noodles (especially Udon) and curry, like I do, then it’s only natural that you try the Cury Udon at curry house.  Mmmmm.  It doesn’t get much better than this. 

Curry House
123 S. Onizuka St. #204, Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 620-0855
Map

It Zushi is located on the side of Westwood Village near Fat Burger, and has a small front but the actual restaurant is much larger inside.  This is another one of those fusionized sushi places that’s probably more like a good drinking place than a sushi place.  There’s no parking here so just park on the street or in one of the parking structures.

This is a picture of the sushi bar area.  I sat at a table but there was only one sushi chef and not very many seats there.  Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version.

I tried the more traditional nigiri sushi called “Sushi Mix” for $14.  What was I thinking? Ordering real sushi here was a big mistake.  I would not recommend this for anyone except people who love the sushi at Ralphs.  Instead, come here for the sushi rolls.

The menu is big and the sushi roll menu (yes, they have a separate menu just for that – see picture) is almost as long as the Jerry’s Deli menu.  My eyes started to glaze over from this long list.  Click on the thumbnail to see this long list of sushi rolls.  They pretty much have everything you can think of, and a few more.

My friend tried the BMW (see picture – $9.50), which is made of just about everything but the kitchen sink.  It’s got eel so if you don’t like eel, don’t order it.  I tried some and it was surprisingly pretty good.  But then with all that sauce, how can you screw this up?

And as always, just to let you know, hot green tea here was $2, which proves that it’s not a traditional Japanese restaurant.

So basically, if you like sushi rolls, and are in Westwood, and want to drink, and happened to park nearby, this might be the place to drop in.  Otherwise, there are better alternatives within walking distance.

It Zushi
10959 Kinross Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 443-8686
Map

Honda Ya just opened last week so I decided to give it a try. It’s located in the Little Tokyo Shopping Mall on the 3rd floor right next to Sushi Go 55. You probably wouldn’t find it by accident unless you were already in the mall but I love the multi-story parking structure.

The first picture is the interior looking towards the yakitori bar from the entrance.  Click on any of the pictures to see a larger version, then click “Back” in your browser to come back here.

The second picture is the tatami (sit on floor) area in the back.  This is the traditional way of sitting in Japan.

The 3rd picture is the combination plate ($11.95) I ordered with sashimi, hiyayako (tofu) and natto (fermented beans).  It comes with rice, miso and potato salad.  Yes, potato salad.  You can choose which combination you want.  I also tried the Ume-Ku (cucumber with plum, $3.95) and Zaru soba with Tororo (cold noodles with grind yam, $7.95, $6.50 without grind yam).

In the center of the sitting area is a party table with this pot in the middle.  I saw some money coming out of the pot which I would guess is some type of good-luck thingie.

The menu is full of cool stuff for drinkers, including ramen noodles, chazuke (rice with hot tea) and other Izakaya type goodies.  Unlike other wannabe Izakaya places, this place has the look and feel of one, including 2 pages of alcoholic beverages.  It’s also brand new, clean, and traditional.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is nothing I ate was good.  The tofu was too hard, the sashimi was small and only so-so, and even the potato salad was hard and almost uncooked.  The grind yam and natto was good, but you really can’t screw that up.  The zaru soba was over cooked and was not the type that I like.  But remember that I am a noodle nut so I didn’t expect the noodle to be good here.  The ume-ku had too much bonito and not enough plum.  Get the Ume-ku at Izayoi instead.  It’s good there.  The shocker was the rice was overly sticky.  I’ve never been to a Japanese restaurant where the rice wasn’t prepared to almost perfection.

On top of all this, the waitress was confused with the menu and I asked her to ask somebody else to make sure she was correct, and of course, she wasn’t.  I asked her if she spoke Japanese, since she didn’t seem to understand English, and she said a little.  Huh?

When Bushnell first opened Chucky Cheese, they had great games, a rat mascot, party atmosphere, and great service.  What they also had was horrible cardboard tasting pizza.  The lesson is not to forget your core business.  They quickly made adjustments to survive, but that is a lesson for any businessperson.  But I digress.

I’m going to give this place some benefit of the doubt because they just opened.  I can see the waitress being confused with the new menu.  Also I’ll excuse the so-so sashimi, Zaru soba and tofu.  Afterall, this a Izakaya, a drinking place.

What I don’t excuse is the hard potato, and rice.  Any caring competent owner should make damn sure that everything is up to par, at least for the first month.  If not, things can only go down hill from where you started.  There are other Honda Ya’s in Fountain Valley and Tustin, so obviously, they must know what they’re doing.  But what passes as okay in those places will not pass as okay here in Little Tokyo, where the customers are really Japanese.

After having said that, I’m sure that if you want to have a drink with your friends, who cares what the food tastes like, right?

Honda Ya
333 South Alameda #314, Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 625-1184
Tuesday-Sunday: 5:30pm to 1am (last call about 12:30am)
Map

Nigiri Sushi Combination - $18.95

Last time, I didn’t review their sushi, which is like going to Magic Mountain and not riding the rides.  So this time, I got the sushi, which comes with miso soup and other items.  Everything was fresh and prepared to perfection.  The sushi chefs here know what they’re doing.

Sushi Go 55 Restaurant
333 S. Alameda St. #312, Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 687-0777
sushigo55.com
Monday – Friday: 11:15am – 2:15pm Lunch, 5:30pm – 10pm Dinner
Saturday: 11:30am – 2:30pm Lunch, 5pm – 10pm Dinner
Sunday: Closed
Map