Sushi | Noms Not Bombs

Hailing from Hawai’i, I know and like (ok, love) good Japanese food. And I’m not talking about overpriced Japanese food from restaurants with TMZ permanently camped outside. I’m talking about solid places that remind me of home, and Sushi Gen is one of those places. After a long day at work, I needed a little dose of home.

Sushi Gen, located in the Honda Plaza in Little Tokyo, has a bad rap for having somewhat pricey dinners, but this fails to take into account the A) how fresh their seafood is and B) the sheer amount of food they give you if you order a dinner combination. If you visit Sushi Gen be forewarned that there will be a little bit of a wait, but take this as a good sign.

J ordered the Sushi Deluxe Combination, which came with a salmon skin salad, mazurka (a combination of sweet potato and seaweed) and a pretty big sampling of sushi.

I didn’t give this a try, but it looked good enough for someone at the next table to ask what it was!

The mazurka. I had never tried this before, and it was an interesting combination of textures and sweet and salty flavors.

For those of you who know me, I clearly ate none of this, but it looked beautiful–particularly the orange of the eggs.

I ordered the chicken teriyaki dinner combination, which includes miso soup, sunomono, pickled vegetables and tempura.

At a lesser restaurant, these dishes can be throwaways, but, here, they’re truly part of the meal. The miso’s flavor was almost perfect, and the rice noodles were a nice addition to the seaweed and the crunchy cucumber.

And then there’s tempura. Shrimp, zucchini, pumpkin and potato. There are few things sadder than soggy tempura, and this was satisfyingly crunchy.