Toss a shrimp tempura roll anywhere on the twenty mile stretch of Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and you will either hit a struggling actor, writer, porn star or burgeoning sushi joint. Sushi is to the Valley as Charlie Sheen is to rehab. In fact, the Japanese call Ventura Blvd, “Sushi Ginza”, which translates to sushi corner. Some are glorified bait shops while others are among the best in the world. The fantastic Sushi Nozawa in Studio City is home to the “Sushi Nazi” where the Seinfeld writers who once worked across the street were inspired to parody him as the Soup Nazi.
Nazis aside, for my money the greatest sushi chef in L.A. goes to the venerable Katsu-ya Uechi. Whether he laces his baby tuna sushi with baby crack rocks is unclear, but ever since our first visit eight or so years ago we’ve been hooked. Katsu-ya opened his first restaurant in 1997, tucked unceremoniously in a Studio City strip mall between a pet shop and a hair salon. It was the first restaurant Mrs. Glutton and I spent over a hundred dollars on a meal. We did it at a time when we were dead broke, but the second we bit into a hand crab roll money suddenly became no object. Katsu-ya created a monster. He created a lot of monsters. And as his reputation grew, so did his empire. The SBE Group soon came calling and infused their Phillip Stark hipster flair to new restaurants in Hollywood, Brentwood, Glendale and Downtown Los Angeles with locations in Miami and Las Vegas coming soon. While the quality of the sushi in these mega joints hasn’t declined, the intimacy of the culinary experience has. And it is for that reason Katsu-ya Uechi returned to his “Sushi Ginza” roots and opened Kiwami in December of 2008.
Kiwami is aptly translated to mean the ultimate. While not the hole in the wall that his first joint is, Kiwami is a humble stand alone building dressed in modern zen clothing. Since opening, Mrs. Glutton and I have virtually abandoned the others in favor of Katsu-ya’s personal sushi bar. This is where the legend himself calls home and concocts his ridiculously tasty creations. He even has a private sushi bar in the back where patrons can spend a little extra to experience the master’s work. While tempting, the Mrs. and I always opt for the main sushi bar where we are treated as regulars and slipped sushi cut form the belly of the fish that were swimming less than twelve hours earlier in the waters off Japan or Greece or New Zealand.
So, let’s talk about a typical meal. After cleaning the pallet with a few gulps of Kiran Light, we always start with the baked hand crab roll. Actually four because we’re gluttons. Despite being one of the more simpler dishes, the baked crab roll garners the most “holy craps” from anyone we’ve ever dined with. It’s like the movie, Office Space. It bombs at the box office because it has no stars and looks like nothing you want. But then you try it and it’s great. And when you try it again it's even better.
Next we order the yellowtail with jalapeno. This is an impossibly fresh slice of yellowtail tuna rolled between a thin slice of cucumber and jalapeno in a ponzu sauce. I swear I could eat my body weight in tuna and not get full.
Next up is the whitefish or halibut carpaccio. This baby consists of thinly sliced whitefish with a thin slice of cumquat and baby tomato with oils and pepper. The sweetness of the cumquat mixed with the peppered oils is an unexpected but happy marriage of flavors.
The next dish is the stomach filler. Spicy tuna on crispy rice (Top). Almost every sushi restaurant does this now. It’s like their bread at an Italian restaurant. But no one does it better than Kiwami. The perfectly seared cube of crispy rice, topped with fresh tuna and a slice of jalapeno is pure comfort food.
Now that we’ve calmed our cravings, we finish with the sushi. This usually consists of tuna and Goldeneye or New Zealand snapper with ponzu. All of it just melts in your mouth. Perfectly simple, simply perfect.
This review is shamelessly positive, but like I said, I’m an addict. Chef Katsu-ya completes me. Socrates once said, “Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.” With all due respect to the gadfly of Athens, he never ate a baked crab roll from Kiwami.
Our Dinner for two: $97
With Drinks: $113
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