The first time I laid my eyes on natto was while studying abroad in Japan. To me it was nothing short of disgusting. Fermented soybeans? A raw egg? A simple stir with the chopsticks that made strands that looked like spiderwebs? For breakfast? It was not a pleasant experience, but it was certainly an experience to be remembered.

And despite the sordid memories, I was reunited with natto at a sushi restaurant and decided that after 9 years it deserved another try. Now, to be sure I must make it clear that natto is usually served in a bowl and not wrapped in seaweed. Nonetheless, I didn’t know the next time I would have the opportunity to eat it in bowl form.

The result? Still just as bad as I remember. I like to think that my tastes have evolved, but when it comes to natto I’m not sure they ever will. There is a distinctly sour taste to go along with the beans and the gelatinous texture is difficult to get over. I’d like to say there is something redeeming about natto, but I just can’t find it. Perhaps the most redeeming thing is that I’ve now tried it so you don’t have to.

The Miracle Mile is often considered to be a culinary dead zone. In the beginning of the food truck explosion, the trucks took full advantage of the lack of good food to dish out grub to those hungry workers. So when I was meeting someone for dinner and they suggested Yuko Kitchen in the Miracle Mile, I was a little bit surprised. They knew I had a food blog, right? It turns out that yes, they did and they were more than a little concerned about what might happen after I got my hands…errr…chopsticks…on Yuko Kitchen’s food.

To start with, Yuko Kitchen had a few good things going for it. It was BYOB, had a happy hour boba (bubble tea) special with all drinks going for $3 between 4 and 7 and it didn’t limit itself to sushi. Sure, a lot of the menu was sushi, but there were a few options outside of that box. They pretty much consisted of teriyaki chicken and beef, which seemed disappointing at first, but that was before I got my teriyaki chicken rice bowl. The bowl came with the rice and chicken, as well as “greens,” which I ordered without. I didn’t even ask what the greens were because I assumed they were no good.

The bowl was so much bigger than I expected and the chicken was so much more delicious than I expected. Usually teriyaki chicken at a sushi place is an afterthought for picky eaters, but clearly Yuko Kitchen spent time putting together this dish. The sauce was just really quite tasty and even enhanced the flavor of the rice it touched.

The trouble is that Yuko Kitchen is more of a cafe than a restaurant. And I mean cafe in the classic sense that the food is pretty limited and it is more of a hangout place than a place to dine. It may be great for a sushi eater who likes the occasional teriyaki chicken or beef, but for a meat eater who rarely wants sushi the options aren’t quite as good. On the other hand, BYOB and cheap boba is nothing to be disappointed in.

I’ve never understood the point of expensive sushi. When you get down to it, they’re all pretty much using the same ingredients with similar results. So when I ended up grabbing dinner at Hara Sushi in Santa Monica, I was a bit excited. Why? Because their sushi is always half-priced. And, they have a happy hour until 9:30 pm with some pretty cheap beers. So for once in my life, sushi sounded like a good time.

As soon as we were seated, we were presented with bowls of miso soup. It was a good start, but then as we looked at the menus we learned that not all was perfect in the land of Hara. As it turned out, those half-price sushis only applied to non-rolls. This felt like a bit of tease, especially considering everything interesting came in roll form. Fortunately, the rolls still kept themselves at a reasonable price. I chose the Titanic roll. Loaded with fried shrimp, then topped with spicy tuna and a chili sauce, this sounded great, but I feared it wouldn’t be enough food. To be safe, I ordered two more dishes from the half-price menu. One was the smoked salmon and the other was the crab, real crab.

When these things arrived, it was clear that the half-price sushi was not a winner. With two pieces each, these were hardly worth the price and simply didn’t taste very good. The Titanic, however, sank beautifully into my mouth. The crunch of the fried shrimp (tempura) added a nice complexity to what could have been just some more droll sushi. The spicy tuna was also nice and created a good balance with the shrimp. The chili sauce wasn’t exactly spicy, but it did add some nice flavor and made the roll taste good even without soy sauce and wasabi. Of course, I still dipped the pieces in those, but I didn’t feel the need to.

While the crab and salmon were disappointing, I have to say I was pretty happy for the included miso soup. And then, when we thought we were done, out came green tea ice cream, also included in our meals. This was some of the strangest green tea ice cream I had ever had – mainly because it hardly tasted like green tea. Instead, it was a strong vanilla ice cream that had just a hint of green tea flavor. I like my green tea strong though, so while I was happy this was included, I would have liked it to hold true to its name a little better. travelwithgirls.com

So here’s the deal with Hara Sushi. Don’t get excited about the half-price because those pieces of fish just aren’t worth it. But if you like some rolls and beers for a pretty good price, it is not a bad place to get some raw fish inside you.

Katana (warning: turn down your speakers because their retarded site automatically plays loud bass) in West Hollywood is about as trendy as you can get for Japanese food. Yet, to my surprise, when I was sent their DineLA Restaurant Week menu for a possible dinner, I saw only one sushi option. With this in mind, I thought that perhaps the $34 fixed price would actually be worth it, so off we went to Katana. Showing up last, I was greeted with a rousing “irasshai” (although I was a bit disappointed they didn’t go for the more formal “irasshaimase”) and found that some chicken gyoza (potstickers) had already been ordered. This struck me as strange since we were about to order a fixed price meal, but I decided to roll with it.

While waiting for said gyoza, I decided what I wanted for my meal. For the appetizer I chose the Ebi Bacon, also known as bacon-wrapped jumbo shrimp with chili garlic sauce. Then I chose the Spicy Niku Don for my main course. Niku, of course, means meat and in this case the meat was sliced beef and served on steamed rice. To wrap it all up, I got the sorbet with fresh fruit. Now I was ready to eat some gyoza.

When it came out, there were a total of five dumplings. Not exactly what I had hoped for an 11 dollar appetizer. It really was some good gyoza, but I couldn’t help but think about my life once upon a time when I used to stuff myself with a plateful of gyoza for a buck in Hikone, Japan. Alas, such a memory could do me no good at Katana.

After that I moved on to my personal appetizer, the Ebi Bacon. If an appetizer is something simply meant to make you hungrier for the main course, then the Ebi Bacon really did its job. It came as one simple skewer and although there were multiple ebi on the skewer, this was certainly not an appetizer fit for the $34 price range. As for the taste, the Ebi Bacon was really quite delicious. I am often fearful of shrimp because it can be rubbery, but this was nice and crunchy with a nice balance of bacon, chili and garlic. After my skewer I was left wanting more, but there was no more to be found.

Instead, I found my Spicy Niku Don. This dish was pretty much an upscale Yoshinoya beef bowl, but with a vile twist. Yes, that’s kimchi in there. I don’t know what crazy person thought kimchi in niku don was a good idea, but dammit if I wanted kimchi I would’ve gone to a Korean restaurant. And I don’t want kimchi, because it is a terrible terrible pickled vegetable. I removed the kimchi from my don and then went to work. Once again, I was happy with my dish, but I was left wanting more. Preferably more of the beef, because I struggled to maintain a good ratio of beef to rice as I ate through my bowl.

Finally, it came down to dessert. First, they brought out the wrong dessert, so I sent it back. After about 15 minutes passed, my sorbet with fresh fruit arrived. I was amazed that such a tiny dish could have taken them so long. Among all the bright colors, I almost couldn’t find the sorbet, but then I realized that it wasn’t because of the bright colors but because the scoop of sorbet was only slightly larger than a raspberry. Wait, I take that back because I have seen raspberries bigger than that. I dug in knowing this would be my final food of the meal and once again I found some tasty food that left me desiring more.

Look, we all know the saying, “leave the audience wanting more.” Let me get one thing straight: THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO FOOD. When I leave a restaurant, I want to be full. I may want more another day, but I should never want more immediately after departure and I don’t care how good your food is. You know, unless I just paid a buck. But with Katana, I dropped a lot more than a buck and although I really did enjoy the general taste of the food, there is no way I got my money’s worth.

On our way to my Chinese homeland, the girlfriend and I happened to have a layover at the Tokyo-Narita Airport in Japan. This was great for the girlfriend since she loves her sushi and also great for me because I was hoping to find myself some Melon Fanta. Sadly, the Melon Fanta was nowhere to be found, but at least we found some sushi. The little airport restaurant was appropriately named “Sushi” (I thought Japanese people were supposed to be creative) and we took a seat inside.

A quick glance at the menu showed that the restaurant certainly was used to catering to Americans, with a California Roll, Veggie Roll and other such things the Japanese wouldn’t dare eat. But they did have some special local Japanese tuna and the section of the menu called “Various Types of Shiny Fish” ensured that you knew you were in Japan. I decided to keep my order simple and got a Salmon Roll. Within a couple minutes, my food was prepared and returned to the table. The pieces of the roll were small, which was fine with me because I had already figured I would be hungry in an hour no matter how much I ate. I snagged the chopsticks from a drawer on the table, poured myself some soy sauce and prepared to eat. Strangely enough, wasabi was nowhere to be found. This wasn’t a big deal, but I hoped the roll wouldn’t be in need of that strangely spicy Asian kick.

I grabbed a slice of my roll, topped it with some white ginger, dipped it in the soy sauce and delicately placed the entire piece in my mouth. After biting in, I found where they had hid the wasabi. In the roll! This was actually awesome because they had figured out the perfect amount of that green spice paste to put in the roll. Aside from the wasabi, I found the roll to be pretty good. I’m no sushi expert, but my girlfriend seemed to feel as though the sushi was really fresh and wonderful. And I have no reason to disagree. We may have only been in an airport, but I feel like even a Japanese airport should have better sushi than the best sushi place in LA.

So an hour later, when I was starting to feel hungry again, at least I felt like I had a good meal in Japan and was ready to tackle me some true Chinese food.

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.

So one night I was told we were going to a cheap sushi place for dinner. Fine. You all know I am not a sushi fan, but if I’m going to eat it, it should at least be cheap. Somehow we wound up at Asakuma Restaurant in Brentwood, which was not cheap at all. This wasn’t the fault of the restaurant, but still I can’t understand why sushi is expensive. I fail to notice a difference between expensive and cheap sushi. In fact, some of the best I’ve ever had was also some of the cheapest I’ve ever had. Wow, do you readers ever get tired of me griping about sushi? No? Good, then read on about some Asakuma.

Despite the high prices, I found a pretty good-looking unvegan dish called Spicy Tuna Watermelon on one of their special menus for 10 bucks. This didn’t have a vegetable in sight and was loaded with spicy tuna and fried. The name confused me, but I like watermelon, so I figured I couldn’t really go wrong. When it came, I realized that it was called watermelon because of the way it was cut into wedges, rather than having any actual watermelon in it. This would have been okay except that there were only four pieces and they were pretty small for 10 bucks. No extra crab legs hanging out or anything else. They had a semi-spicy and sweet sauce on them and were covered in tiny little crunchballs, which were actually a nice touch.

After we all finished, the bill came. There were about eight of us at the table and someone decided that we would split the bill evenly. Ordinarily, my roll and beer would have cost me about 20 bucks, including tax and tip, which is already ludicrous. But when other people ordered multiple drinks and rolls, my cost came out to more than 30 bucks. This was not Asakuma’s fault, but it taught me a valuable lesson: Never order something cheap in a big group. You will get screwed. In truth, 10 bucks isn’t a lot of money, but it’s more of the principle of me paying for someone else’s drinks or sushi, which I didn’t intend to do.

The service was spotty at best, and I know we were a big group, but it would be nice to order a meal within 20 minutes sitting down and get the bill within 20 minutes of finishing. I don’t like to be rushed while I’m eating, but I would at least be able to see the waitress if want something.

Anyway, Asakuma made some decent sushi. Perhaps one day I will discover sushi that will blow me away. I just don’t really see that happening.

In yet another night that I was made to eat sushi, I was brought to Yamato Restaurant in Westwood. Catering to the college crowd, their sushi is always half off, which is great, except that it makes you wonder why they wouldn’t simply print prices that are low. Is it some way to confuse people into ordering more or to make them think they are there at a special half off time? Either way, it is weird, but good for the wallet. When I arrived, some food had already been ordered, which was slightly bothersome, but I decided to roll with it (pun!).

This starter was the tuna tartar over crispy rice and wasn’t half bad. The softness of the raw tuna met with a nice crunch on the rice and was a pretty good way to start out the meal. Since I had to get the obligatory sushi, I got the crunchy roll. This had some shrimp, crab and avocado in it and was covered in some sort of crunchy tempura-esque mix. It was actually pretty good for sushi and a great way to go for an unvegan since it was completely devoid of cucumbers. Luckily, though, this place wasn’t simply dedicated to sushi and also had some robata, also known as Japanese grilled food. I ordered a set of chicken meat balls from this robata menu and they were really good. The sauce on them was great and the balls themselves were nice and juicy.

And that was it. The end of my meal. And from the looks of it, everything tasted really good, right? So you may be wondering why this is entitled “A Sad Ending at Yamato Restaurant.” If you are, then I will reveal something to you, and as a fair warning, if you like this restaurant and want to return, you may not want to read below. Ready?

As I was walking out, I saw a cockroach on the ground crawling around. That’s it. It wasn’t even in the kitchen, but seeing something like that in the waiting area really made me squeamish. It also made all the sushi that had tasted pretty good start rolling around uncomfortably in my stomach. If this cockroach was out here, how many could be there without my knowledge? Hopefully none, but who knows?!

Sorry, Yamato. You may have made some pretty good sushi and your restaurant may have an A, but once I see a cockroach in a restaurant, I never go back.

For too long have I been subjected to people who believe the beginning and end of Japanese food is sushi. While living in Japan for half of a year, I believe I ate sushi once. This was not because I was avoiding sushi, but because sushi just wasn’t as prevalent as we are led to believe. Sure, you can find sushi if you are looking, but it is not as though every corner has a sushi place. Rather, it is much more common to find ramen. This isn’t your Cup O Noodle college hangover ramen, but a real, hearty bowl of broth with noodles, meat and more. Recently, some coworkers of mine were heading out to “that ramen place” in Gardena for lunch and I joined them, fingers crossed that this place would be the true Japanese food I’ve been waiting for.

When we pulled into the parking lot, I knew this place had to be good. There weren’t any Fords or Chevys (no offense, Detroit) in the parking lot, but it was full of Honda, Toyota and Nissan. I looked at the sign, which read Hakata Ramen Shinsengumi and knew I was going to a good place. Inside and outside, everything was written in both English and Japanese. Waiters were yelling random words in Japanese around the place, which could have been obscenities for all that we knew, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t since so much of the clientele was actually Asian.

I took a look at the menu and pretty easily found what I wanted. This was the B-Set, which was a bowl of Hakata Ramen, gyoza dumplings and steamed rice. Rather than telling the waiter what we wanted, we had a slip of paper to write our orders on. This gave you many options on how to order your ramen. I ordered my noodles hard, my oil normal and my soup base strong. I also ordered some Spicy Miso in the soup. At the end of the options, there was a section called “Un desire able?” None of us could quite figure out what this meant, since it seemed semi-Spanish. I thought that whatever this was, I would want two, but I was wrong. Our waiter told us that this was ginger and green onions. I only got the ginger, which I suppose constitutes only half of an “un desire able.”

My ramen (pictured above), gyoza and rice arrived together and looked so awesome that a drunk man wandering the streets of Osaka at 2 am would have been proud. I dug into both and was a happy man. The gyoza was crispy on the bottom and soft on top, just as it should be. When I took a look at the ramen my friends were eating, I knew I had made the right choice by going with hard noodles. It’s kind of like getting al dente with Italian pasta, but better.

The spicy miso was a great addition to this soup, also. It came in a scoop like ice cream, but happily dissolved into the broth with a little twirl of the chopsticks. It turned the broth into a beautiful orange color and added some delicious flavor. The only real problem with this soup came after I had eaten all of the noodles and meat. When the broth was all alone, it was too salty and strong. This was mostly my fault for ordering a strong soup base, so I have learned my lesson and will get the normal soup base next time.

As a bonus for having extra broth at the end of my meal and being childlike, I discovered the art of ramen oil painting. This involved me squirting bits of oil into my soup and shaping it with my chopsticks. If you look closely, you can see the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus to the right!–>

So, yeah. This was a pretty great place to get some lunch, and cheap too! The ability to customize your ramen is a pretty sweet option that can make anyone happy. Also, they have their own YouTube page, with is pretty badass. This is Japanese food as it is meant to be and not some silly, trendy sushi restaurant with rolls stuffed with jicama.

When you walk into Kaya Sushi, there is a massive glass waterfall blocking your way. Do not be deterred, though, because you can easily circumvent this waterfall by walking to the left or right. If you make it past, you’ll find yourself in the posh new sushi restaurant in El Segundo.

The place had an apparent brush with Korean as well as Japanese, since the lettering in their logo was distinctly Korean and there were even a few Korean items on the menu. Their sushi roll list was quite extensive, but I managed to find the least sushi-ish dish on the menu for myself.

This glorious piece of work was called the Kaya Taco Roll and consisted of spicy tuna and avocado in an egg roll skin, deep fried and topped with mozzarella cheese and with some sweet eel sauce. I ordered the delicious-sounding roll with intense excitement. While waiting, we all were given some miso soup to sip on, but this was fluff compared to the roll I was so excited about.

When my roll arrived, I looked upon it in disappointment. Topping each section of the roll was half of a cherry tomato. Nowhere on the menu did it say that I would be forced to look upon a tomato trying to impersonate a cherry. Luckily there were no veggie bits tucked inside the rolls and the tomatoes were pretty easy to remove with my agile chopstick abilities.

With the tomato party crashers removed, I was free to dig in on my roll. This was the way sushi should be eaten. Each bite was tastier than the next, and even better when dipped in that eel sauce. The tuna and avocado danced on my taste buds and the mozzarella made it all taste better. I think it’s strange that other than cream cheese, cheese has not been experimented much with sushi. It’s time for this to change, because cheese makes everything better.

Kaya Sushi gave a me a completely new outlook on sushi. In the Sushi Kaya world, sushi is a much more ambiguous term than I had always thought. It paved the way for me to order something I never before would have considered sushi, and it was delicious. Now if only they could tell me ahead of time that they will be tainting my experience with cherry tomatoes.