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Mochi plush2/20/2023 ![]() Get a taste of Los Angeles’s Nikkei moment at these four phenomenal restaurants.Īs a Japanese American growing up in the South Bay - first in Rancho Palos Verdes and then “down the hill” in Gardena - Ray Hayashi has been deeply immersed in Japanese, American, and Japanese American cultures since he was born. The current rise of Nikkei cooking strikes a balance between tradition and innovation - deliberately invoking aspects of both cultural experiences and delighting diners with soulful histories and remixed flavors. The marrying of Japanese and American ingredients and sensibilities is more nuanced and intentional, redefining the American side of the Japanese American culinary landscape. By now, it seems, chefs drawing inspiration from their personal paths is well-trodden territory, but the dishes emerging from these kitchens hit differently. In recent months - with the opening of Ryla in Hermosa Beach, N/Soto in Mid-City, Hansei in Little Tokyo, and Gunsmoke in Hollywood - Japanese American chefs are continuing this storied legacy of thoughtful experimentation and genre-busting cooking. ![]() Both mochi ice cream and California rolls trace their histories to Little Tokyo, while trailblazing chefs like Roy Yamaguchi, who fused Japanese ingredients with French techniques at his 1984 Hollywood restaurant 385 North, and Nobu Matsuhisa, who served Peruvian Japanese fare at his 1987 Beverly Hills restaurant Matsuhisa, introduced their Japanese-rooted cuisines with global influences to a local audience before helming their respective restaurant empires. Aside from the cuisine’s evolution over time and across generations - as ingredients were substituted based on availability and flavors tweaked to fit changing tastes - Angelenos’ open minds and adventurous palates have made the city a center for innovation for over a century. While Gunsmoke’s menu feels perfectly relevant in the current era of chaos cooking, this freedom to experiment beyond familiar foodways is a long-standing facet of Los Angeles’s Japanese culinary history. Pork gets swapped for lamb in the Filipino dish sisig, its flavors built from a Japanese dashi and finished with a French beurre monte it’s served alongside crisp lettuce, fresh perilla, and tobanjan, a Japanese fermented bean and chile paste. Tennessee country ham is shaved atop raw slivers of tuna like katsuobushi (bonito flakes) for a delicate hint of smoky savoriness. This is Nikkei cuisine, a nod to the far-reaching Japanese diaspora (not to be confused with Japanese Peruvian fare). Kida and his team are drawing on their Angeleno upbringings, cultural backgrounds, and culinary training to dream up dishes that defy tidy categorization. ![]() “And that’s what gave me the confidence to pull off this menu that doesn’t speak to one particular ethnicity.” “I literally could do anything in Hollywood and it would be accepted,” says Brandon Kida, the Japanese American chef behind the restaurant Gunsmoke, which opened near the corner of El Centro and Selma avenues this past July. ![]()
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