Kanpachi sushi in Gardena

Omakase! Served by the soft-spoken Kiro-san, a sushi chef who is an old friend of Jen and her family.

1) Hirame (halibut) and Tai (red snapper)
2) Toro (fatty tuna) and Maguro Tataki (marinated seared tuna)
3) Hotate (scallop), Mirugai (giant clam), and Awabi (abalone)
4) Uni (sea urchin roe)
5) Aji (Spanish mackerel) and Kanpachi (amberjack)
6) Ama Ebi (sweet shrimp) and Tako (raw octopus)
7) Tamago (omelet)

Interspersed between the sushi courses were a miso soup with the tasty head of the shrimp (from #6) and a delicate steamed egg custard.

Was very interested in the progression of the omakase, starting with the lighter-tasting types of white fish to red fish, then to crisp bivalves, back again to fish, this time of the stronger, oily varieties, and climaxing in glorious shellfish. Tamago a sweet ending.

Tasty bits I got after the omakase was finished, out of greed:

• Saba (mackerel), which this chef makes extra luscious through smoking
• Tako (octopus), miraculously tender, cut into chunks, and served with a dipping salt

Many thanks to Jen for introducing me to this wonderful restaurant, and for helping to reconstruct the menu we had last week. And for throwing in all the Japanese names for the sushi, which I am still trying to learn.

Not using online coupon codes is for chumps

My new thing is finding coupon codes for online purchases.

It takes about 15 seconds to find one. Just type into Google: "[name of online company you were about to give money to without entering a coupon code, like a chump] coupon code."

Enter it -- and poof! It's like there's money on the ground, and you just need to go to the trouble of picking it up.

Call me a penny-pincher, but I get real joy out of this. And afterward, I like to imagine what I could go buy in sushi with the money I just saved.

E.g. With the 9 bucks I saved a half hour ago on Canadadrugs.com with coupon code PPC-0207, I can now go get the following at Hide Sushi: 2 pieces of yellowtail nigiri and a vegetable roll. Or a scallop special and a tamago. Or one order of dynamite. Oh yeah!

A new post

1. The sushi chefs at Hide do not do omakase, as it turned out the other day. So we consoled ourselves by trying out the sweet shrimp. They serve you the sushi first, glistening pink flesh that is crisp-tender when you bite down (in the manner of very fresh shellfish - not green beans!). Then the head, delicately fried, on a separate plate.

2. Dealing with employees may be the hardest part of running a business. Do you give up on a person because he or she is not measuring up 20% of the time? What about the really good 80%?

* Addendum, 08/17/08. Yes, you do give up on that person. And you learn from the experience and move on.

Monkfish liver

Ate monkfish liver for the first time the other night. It was a pale, grayish-beige mixture piled in a big mound on top of rice wrapped in nori, and garnished with some thin curls of green onion. It looked a little daunting. But the taste was very mild, and the texture a bit like cooked fish roe and a bit like foie gras. The chef had taken spoonfuls of it from a bowl in the fridge, so it was cold. Ankimo is filling and left me more satisfied at the end of this meal than any previous sushi meal.

Sushi night

I'd been shunning salmon sushi for various reasons interesting only to me.* But on Wednesday, we ordered some, for a change. It was streaked with fat and delicious.

A note on the sushi chefs at Hide. I like the funny middle-aged chef who stands in the middle spot the best of the three. He teases customers good-naturedly and always looks like he is enjoying his work. Which either means he is a happy man, or he is a good actor. Regardless, if we ever order omakase, I would want this chef to be our man.

Ambition for next time: Monkfish liver.

*Ha, I almost forgot the purpose of this blog. So, the reasons I had not been ordering salmon sushi were (1) it's so commonplace, (2) I eat cooked or smoked salmon all the time, (3) it's one of those "safe" fish that a lot of sushi beginners eat, so less cool-seeming, (4) I have a slightly OCD acquaintance who is into sushi and told me he eats nothing but a big plate of salmon sushi every time, (5) raw salmon can have a slightly overpowering taste sometimes, and feel a little too rich on the tongue. But now all these things don't matter anymore -- salmon is delicious again!

Revolving Sushi

Another sushi excursion, this time not at Hide Sushi but at Daichan Kaiten Sushi, one of these sushi bars with the conveyor belt. We only got a few of the dishes off the belt, and ordered the rest from the chef, who sat us right in front of him. This night was about gobbling up lots of types of sushi for pretty cheap.

Consumed:

Frothy mugs of Kirin
Ono (explained as "white tuna")
Inari (adorable, miniature stuffed tofu skins)
Hamachi (middling)
Uni (good, but so small they were almost circles instead of ovals)
Unagi (perfect soft, flaky flesh and crisp exterior)
Salmon skin roll (fine)
Scallop Dynamite (filled with mostly other things besides scallops, and tiny bay scallops at that.)
Tako (unimpressive octopus, sliced too thin)
Edamame (warm, salty)
Spicy Scallop Roll (the bay scallops, tasty and overflowing, redeem themselves here)
Seared Tuna (ordered it, then regretted the "seared" part when the chef picked up a glistening red hunk of tuna. But then tasted it. Spectacular.)
Banana Tempura (smashed flat, then fried. Drizzled with chocolate sauce and on the house, the best kind.)

The ono was pure white and clean-tasting. But I'm not sure what type of fish it was, exactly. Searching on the Net didn't help. I learned that white tuna is usually called shiro maguro, and is white albacore tuna, or sometimes a fish called escolar. That Hawaiians eat a fish called ono, "after the Native word for 'delicious,'" (Wikipedia) but this fish is known elsewhere as wahoo. And that black marlin also sometimes poses as white tuna on sushi menus. V. confusing.

Sushi Night

Went again to Hide Sushi with Eric last night. It was packed, so we could not land the sushi bar and were instead seated at a table. Both agreed that the quality of the food is not the same when you are not at the sushi bar, where the chef is either (a) compelled by your nearness to give you the best cuts, or (b) close enough to see you really love sushi and are not a chump who will swallow his best cuts without tasting. So it may be better to hold out for the sushi bar, however hungry you are.

Sushi consumed (in no particular order, since it arrived at the table all at once):
Maguro (Tuna)
Hamachi (Yellowtail)
Uni (Sea Urchin)
Unagi (Eel)
Scallop Special (Sushi topped with chunks of scallop and flying fish roe, in a pink sauce)
Saba (Mackerel)
Red Snapper with salt and lemon (The flesh is scored, maybe to allow the seasonings to penetrate)
Tamago (Egg)

Also:
Clam and scallop dynamite (Baked in a small dish with flying fish roe, mushrooms, mayo, and finished with a squeeze of lemon.)

Sushi night

Hurray! This is the first installment of my to-be regular sushi report. Wednesday nights, every other week, at Hide (said Hee-day) Sushi on Sawtelle Blvd, in the middle of "Little Tokyo West" here on the Westside of Los Angeles. The goal is a deeper understanding of sushi, how to eat it, how to order it, and to get to know a great local sushi bar and the 3 sushi chefs who man it.

Sushi consumed, in this order:
Maguro (Tuna)
Hamachi (Yellowtail)
Unagi (Eel)
Mirugai (Giant clam)
Saba (Mackerel)
Ikura (Salmon roe)
Tamago (Egg)
Vegetable Roll (Avocado, cucumber, radish sprouts, gobo)
Uni (Sea Urchin)

Ambition for next time: Red snapper sushi with lemon and salt, and what looked like a piece of shiso leaf between the snapper and rice. The couple next to us, who appeared to be regulars, were having it and it looked good.

A belly full of uni

I am a lucky girl: Two wonderful dinners in one weekend. Yesterday, it was an Italian restaurant in Brentwood called Osteria Latini. Great thanks to Erin's boyfriend, Naveen, for treating us to the meal and choosing a delicious wine - a 2001 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon. My entree was linguine prepared with "tuna eggs," garlic, and olive oil.

I'd never had tuna eggs before (though I would advise the chef to call it "roe" on the menu instead). But I think I have the dish figured out. The linguine was a rich, yellow homemade pasta cooked al dente and tossed with the olive oil, garlic, and what appeared to be shavings of tuna roe. I think the roe was cooked and smoked so that it was hard, and then grated to make flavorful shavings for this distinctive pasta.

[Aha! My friend Google has just solved the mystery. And reminded me of the name of my dish: Linguine alla Bottarga. Bottarga = dried and salted roe.]

The second wonderful meal was tonight with Jason and Jen at Kanpachi, a sushi bar tucked in a strip mall in Gardena. The chef has known Jen's family for years, and treated us like guests in his own home. Leaving the meal to his good judgment, we sat at the bar with happy hearts as he feasted us with a long succession of nigiri sushi. With his own hands, he placed them in couplets on a big ti leaf we each had in front of us.

My only regret was eating a bit too quickly, before I learned that the pairings were done with a purpose. The best sushi I had was of saba, a mackerel that had been salted and vinegared then molded into a small square with rice. I also had a very fresh and melty uni * (sea urchin), the memory of which stayed on my tongue the whole drive home. And a very rich toro (fatty tuna) and soft chunks of purple octopus served with a flavored dipping salt. Another interesting dish, served just in the autumn season, was a delicate mushroom broth in a tiny clay teapot. We squeezed a small lime-like fruit into the broth, then drank little cupfuls until it was gone.

As for the title of this entry, it's because the chef at Osteria Latini sent to our table a free appetizer of uni-and-sea-scallop carpaccio. We had gotten the shaft in terms of seating, so this was his way of apologizing. Like the soft uni on our tongue, the resentment melted away.

* For those who haven't experienced uni, it's a soft, yellowish mass that has both a faint sweetness and the salty taste of the sea. I enjoy it for the same reason that I am in love with fresh raw oysters. Both are so simple and natural that they turn out to be, kind of paradoxically, more of a luxury than the most elaborate soufflé.