Japanese Cuisine Comes Home

So the name suggests bottomless cups of coffee and hash browns extra well done. Forget that. Sisters Emiko Sekine and Etsuko Hashimoto have turned this tiny space on the second level of a Northridge mini-mall into something close to a transcendent eating experience. E & E Cafe is a short course on home-style Japanese cooking.

It’s a cute, somewhat kittenish room, done mostly in white--the lace curtains on all the windows are white, and so are the walls (which are densely decorated with the Japanese earthenware pottery known as yakimono). The sisters cook in an open kitchen behind a four-stool counter, where many regular customers while away the time over a pot of coffee and one or more of their homemade desserts.

Did I mention sushi? I didn’t? Good, because sushi is the last thing that a Japanese would consider home-style cooking. They serve rather hearty dishes: pasty Japanese curries, pan fried dumplings, fried noodles and filling rice plates. It reminds me of the dishes I fondly used to eat at rabbit-warren-sized cafes on the back streets of Tokyo.

The mainstay of this menu is Japanese-style curry. This is nothing like Indian curry--it’s huge bowls of carrots, potatoes and the meat of your choice in lots of spicy gravy. You specify how spicy you want your curry to be by giving your waitress a number from one to six, six being the spiciest. (You can go higher than that, but each additional stage adds ten cents to the price. E & E’s level 10 is as hot as an Indian restaurant’s hot curry.)

I’ve had tonkatsu curry here, where the ginger- and coriander-flavored gravy is complemented by a deftly breaded pork cutlet, and I’ve had a delicious chicken cutlet, chopped up into bite-size chunks. With a curry, you get miso soup, salad, a massive helping of rice scooped out of a pot with a wooden paddle. It takes a big appetite to finish all this meat, rice and gravy.

There’s also a compartmentalized lacquer condiment box, and I found both cutlets go especially well with the condiments in it: raisins, grated coconut, Japanese pickles, shaved almonds and shichimi (literally “seven spices”), a devilish red powder made of chiles, ginger, star anise and lemon and orange zest.

However, there’s much more than Japanese curry here. The daily special might be anything from delicately creamy potato croquettes (the menu calls them koroke, which is the Japanese pronunciation of croquette) to nappa cabbage stuffed with ground beef in sauce. A novice might take it for a Central European stuffed cabbage.

You can always get gyoza, the Japanese pot sticker-like dumplings filled with minced pork and vegetables. E & E’s gyoza are small, light and ethereal; one bite and, whoosh, down the hatch. Sometimes you see regular diners snacking on the seaweed-wrapped rice triangles known as onigiri before they tackle a main dish. Here, as in most Japanese family restaurants, the onigiri come ready stuffed with a choice of either sour plum (umeboshi) or flakes of salty, dried bonito, a fish in the tuna family.

For a really light meal, try one of the two salads from the menu. One is a chicken salad made of chicken breast, iceberg lettuce, green onions and deep fried wonton skins. The other is a healthful salad made with cubes of tofu, tomato slices, radish sprouts (kaiware) and green onions.

The salads would taste good plain, but what really makes them special is the cafe’s original dressing. It’s a sweet, pungent sesame oil vinaigrette. If you really like it, you can buy a bottle ($3) to take home when you pay the check.

The desserts are unusual and bizarrely seductive. Cream anmitsu is a sort of sundae of vanilla ice cream, the red bean paste known as anko, (canned) mandarin orange slices and cubes of zeri, a jelly made from agar. If that’s too far out, have one of the textbook homemade cream puffs, a piece of good chocolate cake layered with a smooth butter cream frosting or Emiko’s own fresh strawberry-topped New York style cheesecake, a creamy version that puts the cheesecakes in most of our delis to shame.

There is steamy, freshly brewed Colombian coffee to accompany the pastries and refills are free. Let’s face it. You’ve come home.

BE THERE

E & E Cafe. 18429-D Nordhoff St., Northridge. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Dinner for two, $13-$22. Suggested dishes: gyoza, $2; chicken salad, $4.10; tonkatsu curry, $6.95; stuffed nappa cabbage, $7.45; cream anmitsu, $3.25. No alcohol. Parking lot. Closed Sunday. MasterCard and Visa. (818) 775-0115.