Yuzando

Yuzando, a smallish-sized sushi restaurant in West Los Angeles, may well be the ‘sushi king’ of Los Angeles. Executive Chef Hide Sueyoshi, who previously was head sushi chef at the well-known Hatsuhana restaurant in New York City, serves up exquisitely tasty cuts and cooked specials.  If you can, sit front and center at the sushi bar and watch Chef Sueyoshi prepare his best cuts of sushi. He is able to accommodate custom sushi orders on request. But if the sushi bar is full—as it was the evening of my visit—the fish is so fresh and the chef specials are so surprisingly good that every seat in the house promises an enjoyable experience.

The original Yuzando opened in 1968 as a Japanese dishware shop in Narita, Japan, just northeast of Tokyo. After moving to Los Angeles, the owner kept the name of the shop and founded Yuzando the restaurant, located at 2004 Sawtelle Blvd in the heart of ‘Little Tokyo,’ a strip of Sawtelle Boulevard that runs between Olympic and Santa Monica Boulevards. This area is adorned with funky and fashionable Japanese clothing boutiques, delicious late night bakeries and a broad spectrum of Japanese and Japanese-fusion restaurants and markets.

When we arrived, the hostess quickly found us a table in the intimate, yet brightly lit and artistically designed dining room situated along the sushi bar. The mix of classic Japanese décor and modern edge made us feel like we had found someplace special, as if it were privy only to the locals around Sawtelle Blvd.

We were immediately greeted by our welcoming server, Kirika, and asked if we’d like anything to drink. Yuzando serves an array of various cold and hot Japanese sakes, as well as Kirin, Echigo and Asahi beer, but we opted for what we thought was the perfect sushi companion, Sapporo beer. Along with our beer, one of Yuzando’s helpful staff brought out two little delicious complimentary sunomono (cucumber) salads that had thinly sliced white onion, wakame seaweed, cooked albacore tuna and citrus vinegar dressing. After quickly finishing the sunomono salad and making my dinner selections off of the mouth-watering menu, I knew this sushi experience was going to be special.

Kobe Beef with Garlic Shitake Mushroom Sauce was the menu item that jumped out at us and we immediately ordered that as well as my Japanese favorite, the Seaweed Salad Taster. The seaweed salad arrived first, featuring three types of seaweed—Shirotosaka, Aonori and Namawakame—creatively arranged on a ceramic traditional Japanese modern-style plate. The three types of seaweeds were so crisp and refreshing and the light and slightly zesty sesame dressing was the perfect companion.

For a steak lover, the Kobe beef dish was pure ecstasy. The tender, cubed cuts of juicy Kobe beef were covered in a slightly sweet and salted mushroom sauce. I could have had three more plates of this amazing Kobe beef dish, which was better than what I’d had at any steak restaurant I’d been to, but we decided we’d move on to what we came for: sushi.

In hoping that Yuzando’s specialty items would all live up to the Kobe Beef and Seaweed Salad Taster, we decided to order off of the Special Sushi menu, which included the freshest and best tasting fish of the day, along with some very eclectic dessert items.

Sure enough, the Megochi sushi was a pure delight and a peerless selection in the sushi world.  Kirika happily informed us that Megochi, a saltwater whitefish, was one of her favorite and most popular types of sushi. The Megochi pieces of fish were marinated in a light vinegar dressing and delicately topped with thin slices of green onion. The rice underneath was sticky and tasted of sweet sake and was lightly sprinkled in wasabi. As the fish melted like butter in my mouth, I immediately placed two more orders. We also had the pleasure of trying the Mentako sushi, which was a piece of rice topped with tons of spicy flavored tiny cod roe, as well as and the Aburi salmon, a slightly seared salmon sushi special, which ranked high on our list of favorites that night.

After peeking over at our neighbors who had a number of bright colored large sushi arrangements on their table, we overheard them order the ‘Yuzando roll,’ and then overheard their server replying that the Yuzando roll was a great choice. If there was a roll named after the restaurant, this was something I thought we surely must try!  The Yuzando roll is actually one of the restaurant’s most acclaimed sushi rolls, with crisp cucumber and fresh avocado wrapped in an inside-out roll with rice and topped off with sweet unagi, or freshwater eel. The unagi tasted fresh and tender and slightly barbequed and the rice and fish portions were neither too much nor too little.

The Sai roll was next on our list of my new-favorite sushi restaurant’s special rolls to try. This roll mimicked the Yuzando roll with its harmonious grouping of cucumber, crispy seaweed, creamy avocado, and rice, yet the Sai roll was topped with fresh and juicy slivers of mango.

Last but not least, we had to have one little tasting of what Yuzando offered for dessert. With names like Pear and Espresso Gelato and Earl Grey Ice Cream, it was hard to resist the curiosity and temptation of these uniquely flavored sweets. Being huge gelato fans, we decided to try one of each - pear and espresso. The deserts arrived in a timely fashion, as had each of our dinner items. The portions were just enough to satisfy a lingering sweet tooth after a faultless meal. The pear was slightly sweet and crisp and tasted of fresh picked ripe pears, while the espresso was rich and awakening and the perfect end to our sushi adventure.

Although we couldn’t decide which sushi dish was our favorite, we deemed Yuzando’s sushi, seaweed salad, Kobe beef, and service the best we had encountered in West Los Angeles. I can surely say that Yuzando and its Chef Sueyoshi were unexpected delectations; we will be back very soon to try, say, the Smoked Salmon Carpaccio with Ume Sauce and the Earl Grey Ice Cream!