SOCAL STYLE / Restaurants : Catch from the Sea

People in Piedmont, the wine region in northwest Italy, think nothing of eating raw veal in the form of either carpaccio or a kind of hand-chopped tartar garnished with a thread of olive oil and a few drops of lemon. (And, in season, a shaving of fragrant white truffles.) Yet the idea of eating raw fish--sushi--sounds revolting to them. When a few Piedmontese friends were visiting L.A. recently, after a few days of eating Italian, Californian and Chinese, I told them it was time to try sushi. The two braver of my friends reluctantly went along and, in the end, they loved it.

I couldn’t afford to treat them to Ginza Sushiko in Beverly Hills, where I’ve had spectacular sushi meals but the bill starts at $160 per person. I decided the noise and the trendy crowd at Matsuhisa would be too distracting. I wanted something more typically Japanese, so I took them to Tsukiji in Gardena. It’s a place I go on my own money, with pleasure. The restaurant, named after Tokyo’s thriving fish market, not only has exceptionally fresh sushi and sashimi, done with a touch of creativity, but also has a setting very much like those I’ve found at sushi restaurants in Japan.

Even so, it didn’t occur to me how truly exotic Tsukiji--and the largely Japanese community of Gardena--would seem to someone from Italy. Here we are not far from LAX, at Tozai Plaza, a shopping center in which everything is Japanese, except for a Marie Callender’s. If we had arrived a little earlier, we could have signed up at the shiatsu massage parlor for a vigorous 15-minute massage for $10. But I’d promised to call the restaurant if we were going to be late--for some reason, they don’t take reservations after 7:30 p.m.

The restaurant has a couple of tables at the front and a raised tatami area with three low tables and legroom underneath so it’s more like sitting in a chair. The row of shoes neatly set on the steps all point outward and range from businessmen’s brogues to high-fashion slides and a toddler’s diminutive sandals.

We take our places at the sushi bar beneath a whimsical papier-mache cat and inspect the array of seafood lined up behind the glass. It all has a fine natural gloss, which is a good sign. Fish that’s not as fresh will look more opaque, its flesh slack. The toro (bluefin tuna belly), yellowtail, bluish mackerel and shrimp all look beautiful. I nod at the sushi master, order Japanese beer all around, and ask him to start with some sashimi, thinking that sliced raw fish would be the closest thing to carpaccio.

To start, he gives us bowls of something very similar to a refreshing Piedmontese summertime dish called il carpione: breaded fried fish, served chilled in a sweet vinegar marinade with sliced marinated onions. In Piedmont they usually make it with breaded veal, chicken or vegetables. This the Italians appreciate. Then comes translucent rectangles of halibut about the thickness of dominoes, dabbed with what looks like strawberry coulis, and sliced octopus edged with violet. “Wait,” I caution the Italians, and taste mine first. It’s wonderful, I tell them, my palate dancing to the puckery sauce. Made from the dried salted plums called umeboshi, it’s salty and sour at the same time.

Next comes seared bonita, rimmed with white where the heat of the grill penetrated and absolutely rare in the middle. Buried under a slurry of grated daikon in a light ponzu sauce, it’s decorated with ribbons of shiso leaf and a scattering of sesame seeds. Shiso, I explain, is more or less the sweet basil of Japan. The bonita has a velvety texture, set off nicely by the sharpness of the daikon radish and a few leaves of seaweed. The Italians are intrigued. This isn’t something you’d ever get at your corner sushi bar.

The sushi chef has another sashimi dish up his sleeve--a bowl of ice lined with shiny green leaves on which he sets out sweet scallops interlaced with citrus slices, satiny salmon, fatty tuna and pale hamachi (yellowtail) streaked with the palest pink. I can see the Italians are getting the concept now, enjoying the contrasts of texture and subtleties of flavor.

As I polish off my last bite of hamachi, I notice the sushi chef slicing an avocado and laying a fan of the slices next to a gorgeous piece of Spanish mackerel and a crisp fan of Japanese cucumber. He adds pearls of salmon caviar and a dab of darker fish eggs, some seaweed and a splash of light broth.

We watch as he snatches up a wad of steamed rice, and as deftly as Ricky Jay palming cards, forms it into slender ovals and drapes a slice of toro over each one. I show the Italians how to pour a little dark soy into the shallow saucer, stir in just a dab of wasabi with their chopsticks, lightly dip the fish side, not the rice, into the sauce, eating the sushi in one bite. Ah. Paolo, who comes from the part of Piedmont famous for its risotto dishes, marvels over the texture and perfume of the rice. They aren’t so sure about the next morsel, which is rice wrapped in a tall sash of nori filled with what looks like little ochre tongues. They relax when I give them the Italian name for sea urchin. It’s from the coast off Santa Barbara, and is of a quality usually reserved for Japan.

I love the texture of the raw shrimp with tail, split and set on a pillow of rice, But my favorite sushi that night is a sliver of red snapper topped with a squeeze of that special Japanese citrus called yuzu, which is sweeter and more lime-like than lemons, and coarse-grained sea salt. No soy sauce, the sushi chef cautions.

We finish off with a bowl of miso, which I don’t expect the Italians to like. They don’t. But this notion of eating raw fish? Now that they’ve seen how fresh it is--and what sushi is-- it’s not all that different from what they eat. It’s just carpaccio of the sea.

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Tsukiji

CUISINE: Japanese. AMBIENCE: Small sushi restaurant with sushi bar, shoji screens and tatami area. BEST DISHES: mixed sashimi, halibut sashimi with umeboshi plum sauce; yellowtail, raw shrimp, toro and red snapper sushi. DRINK PICK: Asahi beer. FACTS: 1745 W. Redondo Beach Blvd., Gardena; (310) 323-4077. Lunch weekdays; dinner Monday through Saturday. Sushi, $20 to $30 per person; sashimi omakase (chef’s choice), $35 to $50 per person. Lot parking.