By now, some may have already heard of Kalbi Burger. And why not? Since its opening on June 14th, Kalbi Burger has been creating a buzz around town, especially in the area where it’s located – Koreatown.

Watch out, Tomás, Ricardo and Enrique! Japanese taco scientists in Little Tokyo have recently developed a chicken taco with a taste so luxurious it could only be compared to one thing….

Industry analysts expect our hometown taco engineers to counter with a deluxe carne asada featuring factory-installed hydraulics and Virgin of Guadalupe paneling.

La Chicken
228 E. 1st St.
Los Angeles
www.lachicken.com

New Japan ~ 11283 Santa Monica Blvd. West Los Angeles, CA 90025 ~ 310-477-0557

Many of our city’s best sushi joints flourish in crappy strip-mall parking lots like this one, inhaling smog just a blocks west of the 405 in West Los Angeles. New Japan is not one of these. In fact, their cheap sushi truly blows donkey, resembling the type you might get at a fancy Vons, and one piece is usually left sin aguacate, which really pisses me off. The service is friendly, though disinterested, and sometimes you are subjected to large groups of randy office-mates (feel the sexual tension thicken) or sweaty martial arts teams coming to catch a gander at ultimate fighting on the big screen, all while you try to eat and have a moment to yourself.

Still, it is where I often head when I feel like treating myself nicely, having worked hard on something or saved my pennies. I typically skip the pollock-substituting-for-crab roll or limp eel on rice and instead head straight for the chicken and beef special, a sweet-sauce-glazed feast fit for the king of the Huns, accompanied by soft, warm white rice and a carrot ginger salad ($8). New Japan recently got their act together and ditched the heinous mirrors and disco modern theme (but not the obnoxious TV) for a more traditional setting ripped outta Lone Wolf and Cub, with wee Buddhist idols and plenty of bamboo.

The beef and chicken plate is usually on, though I have had my frustrations when dealing with this plate’s inconsistency as well. The night I came equipped with camera, though, everything was up to its usual tasty standard. I think terriyaki tradionalists would be freaked out by the thick Jemima-like syrup here, but the combined meaty taste of the beef’s juices, its surface gently kissed by the grill, tempered by the overly sweet sauce go great together, like a trans-Pacific Roscoe’s.

The chicken pieces are really soft, white nuggets in medium-sized, rough-cut strips that pop in the mouth, going down easily, with no dryness and mucho sabor. The beef is tough on the outer layer from the grill’s touch, but barely medium on the red inside, with deep cracked valleys where the syrup gathers on all sides. It is simultaneously tender and chewy. The chewiness and griddled flavors strike a tasty balance with the sauce as it soaks up so much syrup and flavor, mingling meat with sweet in every chewy bite. It’s truly a gift that keeps on giving.

I’ve tried the meal with just chicken or beef alone, and it does not work, something about switching meat supplies off and on keeps things fresh and interesting. I really recommend mashing the rice and salad together too, mmmnn, letting the ginger dressing put a little lubrication up in the rice for easy entry through the esophageal sphincter. The option to add tempura, which comes super fluffy in a gravity-defying fried shell that has no physical connection to its entrails, is sometimes a good call for a greasier eating experience, though again, traditionalists should skip it.

From a failed sushi restaurant, at least one pearl is given up to be savored, suckled, and slaughtered by its customers, of which there are always many coming for the good price and easy location. I shouldn’t talk too much shit on the non-chicken-and-beef plates, though. New Japan has a fairly big menu, with lots of different dishes like ramen, which could be of some value. This restaurant might not be for everyone, but for now, and considering its tiny aesthetic improvements, it has me coming back for that one big plate of food. Again and again.

Shinsengumi Yakitori ~ 18517 S. Western Avenue, Gardena, CA 90248 ~ Taco Map

If i stop to think about it, my obsession with japanese culture pretty much starts and ends with food (well ok, and perhaps shibuya gals and gatcha gatcha toys). but beyond that i don’t have much interest in the stuff that most people like about japan – anime, martial arts, zen buddhist rites and flower arrangement… whenever i go there i never ask for directions to the nearest temple. rather, it’s always “where’s the nearest ramen shop?”

So it’s somehow fitting that the restaurant at the end of the universe – my universe – is a yakitori joint. as such, when i fantasize about my old age (not that you could really call it fantasizing, more like, when i consider the grim inevitability of it) i invariably picture myself whiling away the years as “the guy at the end of the izakaya counter with his own personal bottle of sake, somewhere in a rice field in kyushu.”

I’ll be old and quite possibly irrelevant, but at least there’ll be good food and um… young women who’ll let me buy them Prada.

Perhaps then, Shinsengumi Yakitori in Gardena is exactly that. a look into my future. or half of it anyway.

They start you off with raw cabbage. nothing to write home about, but douse it with a bit of the tableside ponzu mixture and it’s surprisingly edible.

Something i like to call “the four corners of flavor.” clockwise from top left – yuzu kosho (spicy citrus paste made from the yuzu fruit), nanami togarashi (a red pepper mixture not unlike that which you can steal from yoshinoya), the aformentioned ponzu (think a citrusy soy sauce, but very watered down), and sansyo (japanese pepper with a musty, acrid kick to it – frickin’ awesome!)

chicken gizzard. crunchy and carbonized with just a hint of shio. limit one per customer and they always run out of these. for good reason.

shio negima – a skewer of chicken thigh meat with green onion, seasoned with salt. the bread and butter of yakitori dining; i can eat up to half a dozen of these in one night.

arabiki sausages – made from japanese kurobuta pork, these are extra flavorful and fatty. a friend compared them to jimmy dean’s sausages, but i wouldn’t know. i don’t eat that junk.

gyu-tan. although not traditionally yakitori, which means “grilled chicken,” robatayaki restaurants often serve a few other things beside bird. beef tongue may well be one of them. and in this case, it’s very delectable beef tongue too.

a big, fat, honkin’ shrimp. the single most expensive thing on the grill menu (at like, $4)

chicken hearts. here you can see 4 or 5 of them. mola ram molaa raaam! anyone who gets that reference is probably at the san diego comic-con right about now.

chicken skin. this is a festival favorite in japan. only over there, the skewers are about two feet long and your order of skin has about as much mass as a standard-issue billy club. amazingly delicious, and thankfully they spare your life by giving you a smaller portion.

on the menu this is listed as “beef flap meat.” i’m not sure what that means but i don’t really care. skirt steak maybe? it’s good but not a must-have.

remember what i was saying about negima? here’s my second one of the evening.

quail egg wrapped in bacon. i’m not sure what the cholesterol count of this puppy is but every bite is an explosion of goodness in your mouf.

enoki mushrooms wrapped in bacon, tebasaki chicken wing, and nankotsu (cartilage). anything “wrapped in bacon” is a must have and unquestionably delicious. the tebasaki i could have done without; same goes for the cartilage which, though good, had a little too much marrow left in it.

grilled shiitake mushroom. i’m a big proponent of a balanced diet and the food pyramid. this was my chosen vegetable for the evening.

there must be some sort of primal satisfaction in counting up all the little skewers one’s consumed throughout the night.

i guess grilled ninniku (garlic cloves) counts as vegetables too.

and so does grilled onion.

about two hours later i got ready to wash it all down with a bowl of their special chicken broth. it doesn’t look like much but it was very very good, and the perfect way to end the meal.

alas, i still needed an encore. so two more negima sent the audience home on a high note.

This review is cross posted at one of Rick’s excellent blogs, Ramaniac B-Sides [--ED].

11555 W. Olympic Blvd. ~ West Los Angeles, CA 90064 ~ 310-575-9337 (TACO Map)

Asahi on Sawtelle has dominated the Westside ramen scene for years. With long waits for ramen that is fulfilling in overly salty, oily, soy-drenched gi-normous bowls, sparsely swimming with pork or beef over a dozen similar dishes, we knew their must be another option west of Broadway for our Japanese noodles.

Sure ’nuff, hiding around the corner, Ramenya has a more refined, though similarly inexpensive, array of flavor, with just as generous portions of excellent ramen, and no lack of options on their 61-item deep menu including plenty of spicy numbers. The second and first generation crowd is also still there, though we had no wait, and the ambiance leans entirely more towards cafeteria than Edo-period hideaway (albeit one with a small manga collection). But the magic of Ramenya is in those fat bowls that hit the table right after your free glass of cold tea does…

The ramen broth here is less salty, more complex and flavorful than its competition, giving us the sense that it is more authentic, and certainly easier on the blood pressure. A wide white bowl of Ajo-Ramen ($7.00) has an artful arrangement, and a clean, garlic-saturated flavor emanates from the whole clove drowned in the midst of sliced pork, crushed red peppers, onion, and chives stir-fried in butter. All flavors were discernable, even with the overpowering garlic essence making vampires bacdafucup.

The much more simple Tanmen ($6.75) was similarly clean and easy on the eyes, the surface skimming with cilantro petals, its delicate broth tasting of chicken stock, the vegetables retaining their rootsy tastes, the tender pork salty in the right way. The broth here is watery in texture, not in taste, which is a refreshing balance between the oily concoction we see around town and the tasteless, textureless Pho we sometimes encounter.

For a taste of something different, we attacked Tenshin Men ($6.75), an unholy looking ramen creation with an entire 3-egg omelet floating inside a rich red gravy. Upon breaking the omelet open, a cooked mass of tender mini-shrimp and thin noodles emerges, allowing one to eat the egg with the ramen or to swirl in into the cauldron and eat it all in one big mess. The dish is a delicious monstronsity, an gnarly egg-orgy full of hot surprises and indulgent flavors.

The noodles in all the dishes are thin and not perfectly homemade, but certainly adequate to sop up the savory broth. In fact, all of the dishes’ noodles reminded me a bit of the microwaveable ramen that got us through higher education, but in a good way, the unmistakeable flavors of the starch familiarly recalling food as nourishment. Asahi wins on the noodle front for texture sin duda.

The gyoza were not standard, either, but seemed to have love invested in their recipe. Ramenya might get a B-grade from the health department, but to us it’s at the head of its class.

Closed Wednesdays!

329 E. 1st St. ~ (213) 437-0563~ Little Tokyo ~ Downtown (TACO MAP)

I’m no expert on which Little Tokyo place busts the best ramen, and I think East might be a chain, but I sure do like the cut of their jib. It is a comfortable little spot heavy on bamboo and posters from Samurai and gangster flicks, earning serious cool points. Tables are laid out in the front, with a bar-sized area for the sushi chefs in the back.

The service is cordial and the general atmosphere is very welcoming, a sort of cross between a low-key Izakaya and a traditional eatery on the country road to Edo. Their menu has seemingly everything from yakitori to terriyaki, ramen, and sushi. It’s sort of like Japanese food 101…

Hot tea was poured beside our cold Kirin drafts. The sushi at East is not going to put Nobu or Urusawa out of business anytime soon. Nonetheless, it is simple, artful, and tasty. Our unagi (eel) rolls were drizzled in long, wavy strokes of soy-based unagi sauce. The flavor was strongly sweet, the texture soft, and the rice firm.

My udon noodles were brought out in a bowl that had a medieval feel, a sort of iron-sided, heavy-duty earthenware. The rootsy blend inside is dense with foliage, chives, seaweed, and a giant piece of tempura shrimp. My favorite ingrdient exists in the slightly boiled egg that is slipped in the bowl. As the egg breaks, the hot soup beings to cook the runny yolk within the broth, adding a barely solid, gooey prescence. The broth itself has a very sweet, comforting taste, though the tempura has nary a chance of staying crisp when it is saturated like this. The noodles keep very firm, and have a solid consistency that keeps them intact as you slurp away. The broth is truly delectable, we slurped it up until we were staring at an end empty bowl. For a price under $7

We’ll keep coming to East. It’s a good deal, cool and cozy environment that makes us feel all warm inside, and very good food at very good prices.