Sushi roki full#

Worth a trip from anywhere in the neighborhood.) 1 (If you’re hungry, and it’s nearby, but don’t get stuck in traffic going.) 0 (Honestly, not worth writing about.If you’re wanting to enjoy a hot dish, why not let your eyes wander over to the Farm section of the menu. Worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California.), 2 (A good place to go for a meal.

What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional.

Atmosphere: Very trendy South Bay branch of one of SoCal’s top sushi destinations, located adjacent to BOA Steakhouse it’s a marquee addition to the Manhattan Village complex.

Sushi roki full#

Details: Full bar reservations essential.Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Or the Salty Caramel Truffle, with chocolate truffles – which are not to be confused with the truffle flavor at Sushi Roku. The Chocoholic Chunk – dark chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips. Maybe the black cherry, made with whole black cherries. (They like their truffles here!)Īfter many small dishes, all I really want for dessert is something simple – like the ice cream served at the nearby Village stand for Handel’s Homemade Ice Cream (“since 1945”). Though many never make it to the entrées (this has always been a cuisine where grazing is the style du jour…the way to roll!), there’s filet mignon “Japonaise,” Jidori free-range chicken, grilled salmon and Chilean sea bass in truffle miso. Quite a nice meal can be assembled out of the toro carpaccio, the seared albacore, the baked cod in sweet miso, the beef ribeye wrapped asparagus, the octopus crudo. And with seven regular rolls, and eight special rolls on the menu (including a Crunchy Spicy Tuna Tempura Roll, a White Lotus Roll of popcorn shrimp tempura and albacore, a Tokubetsu Roll of crab, toro, sea bream and white truffle pesto) they’re kept hoppin’!Īs at Matsuhisa, which is the spiritual forebear of Roku, the cooked dishes on the menu are worth paying much attention to, especially the appetizers. There’s a platoon of chefs busy cranking the dishes out behind the sushi bar. The sushi menu features all the usual suspects – freshwater eel, salmon, sea urchin, sea bream, tuna and tuna belly, yellowtail and albacore. The menu itself is divided into many parts, offering many options – cold appetizers (from the Garden and the Sea), hot appetizers (from the Garden, the Sea and the Farm), Robata skewers, dinner entrées, soups and noodles, of course, sushi, sashimi and both rolls and signature rolls – along with Signature Style Plates of sushi & sashimi, for big rollers.

Call it Urban Rustic with Zen undertones.

Opened by the quartet of Michael Cardenas, Lee Maen, Craig Katz and Philip Cummins, Sushi Roku simply oozes minimalist stylishness – a combination of bamboo, chiseled stone and dark wood, along with the sound of dripping water is the Roku motif. Though there are many ultra-trendy sushi bars in town (so much so that former CAA bossman Michael Ovitz owns a stylish sushi bar called Hama Saku in West LA), few have achieved the cutting-edge cachet of the Sushi Roku chain. And studio types love it because shouting at the chefs is considered to be good form – it’s a culinary form of therapy, with a sake chaser. Also, supermodels and Hollywood starlets like the stuff because it’s high in protein and low in calories. What more can we want?Įver since sushi moved from the realm of culinary exotica to cognoscenti object-of-desire back in the late 1970s, it’s been the food of choice for trendies, fast-laners, and the always popular people-in-black.įrom Terusushi and Sushi Nozawa in Studio City, to Matsuhisa in Hollywood, to Katsu in Los Feliz, to R-23 in the downtown Warehouse District, being able to differentiate between sea eel and freshwater eel has marked you as a diner of distinction, someone whose taste buds have risen far above those of the teeming millions. With the long-awaited opening of Sushi Roku and the adjacent BOA Steakhouse (both owned by IDG, the Innovative Dining Group) in Manhattan Village, the mall has, at last, a sense of purpose, a reason to be.Īnd when Saint & Second from Long Beach opens in a few months, the Village will be a destination worth dining in – though right now, with branches of Joey, Mercado and Dan Modern Chinese, it’s nothing to bellyache about.