Japanese Dishes With a Korean Kick
You know for sure something’s up at Ichiryu when they give you a pack of Korean chewing gum at the end of the meal.
Earlier on you might have noticed that the menu is written in English and Korean, not Japanese. And Korean side dishes come with everything, even sushi. One time, there was a pared-down version of chap chae, a Korean cold dish of transparent noodles. And reddish kimchi is almost always present, as is a very sweet cabbage pickle in startling magenta juice.
Yes, Ichiryu is a Korean-owned Japanese restaurant. Still, you can get classic Japanese udon soup here, under the name casserole noodle. Its clean-tasting sea-flavored broth and slurpy noodles are wonderfully soothing. Japanese miso soup and green tea come with meals, and the lunch combinations offer the exact same dishes you’d find in Little Tokyo.
Often the side dishes include potato salad, which has become thoroughly Japanese. Ichiryu’s is one of the best. The very soft potatoes, just short of mashed, are combined with cucumbers, carrots and diced egg white in a creamy, slightly sweet dressing. Sieved egg yolk decorates the top.
Ichiryu is almost hidden in an apartment house dwarfed by hulking mid-Wilshire buildings. Although only a block from Wilshire Boulevard, it’s quiet and secluded, mostly (it gets crowded at lunch).
There’s a sushi bar, but most people prefer the tables, where there’s more room for all the dishes of a meal. Most combinations are $7.99. For a dollar more you can have 10 pieces of sushi plus two slices of crab and cucumber roll, rice, soup, side dishes and dessert--which is usually fresh orange segments but could also be a slice of honeydew melon.
The Ichiryu special lunch box involves so much food that it took up more than half of my table. One plate was filled with sashimi and sushi, including spicy tuna roll and sweet fried tofu stuffed with rice and vegetables. A basket contained tempura: shrimp, sweet potato and a big slice of kabocha squash. Another plate held grilled mackerel and a lettuce salad. In addition, there was rice, miso soup and five side dishes, this time including marinated bean sprouts.
The regular menu offers live fish and sashimi combinations that run up to $70. Ichiryu deluxe sushi, under $20, is a pretty platter of 15 pieces including sweet soy-glazed eel, cooked until the edges are tantalizingly crunchy.
Mixed fish eggs and seafood over rice brings you four types of roe--salmon, sea urchin and tiny orange and green fish roe, the green flavored with wasabi. These, and a piece of glazed fish, are arranged on rice tossed with white and black sesame seeds and fine shreds of dried seaweed.
A few dishes are distinctively Korean. I assumed “swell” fish soup probably meant shellfish, but there was no mistake. It contained little pieces of chewy fish, tofu, nappa cabbage and green onions in a very, very spicy clear broth. It arrived in the sort of heavy black stone bowl that is used for Korean hot pots.
Another black bowl special contains what looks like an orange blossom at the summit of a pile of vegetables. The menu describes this concoction as raw fish vegetable covered with rice because the procedure is to upend a bowl of hot rice into the mixture. The flowerlike garnish is orange fish roe with a quail egg yolk in the center. Along with raw tuna and halibut, the bowl contains sliced lettuce, greens called sukkat in Korean (shungiku in Japanese, chrysanthemum leaves in English), cucumber, radish and carrot shreds, seaweed, dried fish, radish sprouts and black sesame seeds. A red squeeze bottle of kochujang, a spicy Korean red pepper and bean sauce, comes with this. You drizzle the sauce into the bowl and toss everything together. It’s a sort of salad variation on the Korean rice combination called bibimbap.
Ichiryu is a cheerful place. The sushi chef greets me when I walk in, even though I have never sat at the bar. Waitresses and sushi chefs wear red logo shirts, and the women have black aprons that advertise soju, a Korean alcoholic drink. Takeout food is packed in Korean beer cartons. As I walked to my car carrying a Hite carton, I’m sure any Koreans I passed knew exactly where I had been.
BE THERE
Ichiryu Japanese restaurant, 3460 W. 7th St. (at Kingsley Drive), Los Angeles. (213) 736-0007. Open 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 4-10 p.m. Sunday. Wine and beer. Street parking (watch for street cleaning restrictions on Wednesdays and Thursdays). Major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $20 to $30.
What to Get: Ichiryu special lunch box, raw fish vegetable covered with rice, Ichiryu deluxe sushi, sushi combination lunch, casserole noodle.