The Unvegan

They say mo’ money, mo’ problems. And by they I mean Puff Daddy and the Family. But for me, MoMo Sushi is less less problems. To start off, MoMo Sushi is anything but trendy. It sits in a tiny little corner strip at La Cienega and Olympic with 3 or 4 other shops and a 7-11. Although the inside is certainly Japanese, it doesn’t have any of that overdone Japanese decorum that makes trendy places look more Japanese than Japan itself. So for a sushi place, MoMo already had me happy before I looked at the menu.

The menu wasn’t too extensive, and this was a good thing. None of the rolls topped 10 bucks and most hovered around the $7 range. Shortly after taking our seats, we were all given a nice, warm bowl of miso soup to warm us up from the cold rain outside. This definitely hit the spot and once I finished, I ordered my roll of choice, called the Cheese Crunch Roll. The was one of their most expensive rolls at $8.99 and had cheese, crab, avocado, shrimp tempura and smelt egg. Learning from past mistakes, I asked if it came with cucumbers in addition to those unvegan delights and the waitress told me it did. I made sure to order without, then waited for some crunch.

When my roll came, it was nice and big. A lot of uptown sushi places serve up rolls that are more of a snack than an actual meal, forcing you to order more than one, but Mo Mo’s rolls were a meal in themselves. Based on size, it was definitely worth the price, but then came the taste. And that taste was actually great. Not a cucumber in site and I half felt as though I was in a Cheesy Gordita Crunch because my sushi was cheesy, crunchy, gooey and ummm smelty? It was actually good enough that I kept forgetting to put ginger on my pieces. Usually ginger is great for trying to convince myself that I’m not eating sushi, but in this case it was almost unnecessary.

MoMo Sushi serves up sushi the way it’s meant to be. Without the trend. Or the price. I can only hope that sushi places like this become the trend, rather than the exception, because while I usually just tolerate sushi, MoMo is a place I’d be happy to return to.