Japanese Food's Cozy Home

By SUE ELLICOTT

Sept. 20, 2001 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Photographs from the 1920s show Western Avenue south of what is now the San Diego Freeway as little more than a dirt track lined with telegraph poles.

These days, it’s a busy backbone between the two South Bay cities of Gardena and Torrance, pocked with strip malls, auto body shops, Japanese plant nurseries and industrial parks. Picturesque it’s not--unless you have a thing for car dealerships--but once the lights go out for the night in the banks and electronics dealers, you’ll probably spot, in the corner of a stuccoed strip mall, the steamed-up window of a cafe serving homemade noodles. That’s your signal to pull over.

You’ll probably be underwhelmed by the aesthetics. But if you can get past the idea that you’re eating out a mile from, say, the Exxon Mobil oil refinery, or within eyeshot of a smog-test station, you’ll be well on your way to having one of the area’s many great Japanese food experiences.

Situated as it is to the west of the Harbor Freeway, this part of Torrance and Gardena is made up of industrial areas with modest apartments and single-family homes. But that’s all good news, because it’s the industry that makes the food so interesting.

On weekdays, Torrance’s daytime population swells as several thousand employees, hundreds of them Japanese nationals, head to the offices of Japan’s big automakers, including Toyota Motor Sales USA, American Honda Motor Co. and Nissan North America Inc., who have their U.S. corporate headquarters here. Other big Japanese companies, including Hitachi, also staff large offices nearby. Fortunately for those who like good, affordable Japanese food, they all need to eat.

“There’s every kind of traditional Japanese food here,” says Kiyono Fukuma, a Japanese woman in her 20s who works in Torrance for Blackgold International Inc., an exporter of sporting goods to Japan. “And there’s also more modern places for people like me to go to hang out after work.”

It’s been possible to eat a variety of good Japanese food in downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo for at least two decades. The South Bay offers similar fare with a cozy twist. At lunch, many restaurants cater to the eat-and-run crowd eager to get back to its desks, and service is usually brisk. At night, the pace slows. Japanese college students rub shoulders with homesick Japanese lawyers who shrug off their business jackets to unwind with friends over a chilled Sapporo.

Sue Herbers, Torrance’s city clerk, loves the area for its lack of pretension and its Asian vibe. Her daughter-in-law is Japanese American, and her son still goes by the nickname given to him by Japanese friends in elementary school, “Mochi,” the word for the stretchy paste of pounded white rice used in Japanese desserts.

Indeed, the area has a history of Japanese influences. Herbers remembers what is now a Sears department store in the Del Amo Fashion Center at Hawthorne and Sepulveda boulevards as a lush corner of strawberry and celery fields, nurtured by some of the many Japanese immigrants who moved to the area early this century to farm and, later, to work in the surrounding oil fields.

As everywhere, the Japanese community here suffered a severe blow during World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when innocent Japanese Americans were taken from their homes and interned in camps. Today, however, Japanese culture is again a vibrant part of local life. An arts center hosts performances of Japanese folk music and dancing, while Torrance is twinned with the Japanese city of Kashiwa. And, thanks to its proximity to airports and seaports, the area has since the late ‘80s begun to attract Japanese-based electronics and export companies, despite Japan’s troubled economy.

The first stop for food is Mitsuwa Marketplace, a sand-colored mall that is newer than its sister market on Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles. (Mitsuwa also has markets in Santa Monica, Costa Mesa, San Gabriel and San Diego.)

Inside are an immaculate supermarket; a food court; Japanese grotto; the Asahiya Bookstore, known for its anime books; and several gift stores, among them Mandrake, where hundreds of plastic Pokemon characters and other action figures line glass display cases.

You won’t get gourmet-quality takeout at the stands but rather what John Miyabe, a Japanese American youth counselor, calls “fine working stiff” food. In the food court, vendors display dozens of brightly colored plastic samples of their dishes. At Miyabi-Tei, a big plate of cold udon (thick white) or soba (buckwheat) noodles and two seaweed-wrapped onigiri rice balls costs $5.50. For $3.80 at Mifune, children can order the Bullet Train special, served on a railway car-shaped plate and named after Tokyo’s famous high-speed commuter service. Or take a seat for a box of grilled eel over rice at Daishiki Sushi.

Stop at Mikawaya for a scoop of mochi ice cream or a pastry made from the delicate green paste of green gyuhi beans. To capture Japan’s love of its version of Wonder Bread, take a seat at one of the three tables at St Honore cafe for a crust-free sandwich filled with tuna salad or beef cutlet. Prices: $2.85 to $4.20.

Don’t miss Minamoto Kitchoan, a luxury confectioner that seduces shoppers with elaborately preserved fruits, jellies and cookies of such improbable detail that those shaped like persimmons and lotus flowers look like paperweights. These are special-occasion cakes meant for afternoon tea, wrapped so beautifully you might not want to tear the paper.

Splurge on several to experience the chewy, gelatinous textures not found in American cakes. For fall--flavors are seasonal--try the oribenishihiki, a steamed chestnut in bean paste, or yurineyukan, a “lily root rolled in Japanese sponge cake.” Then stop next door at Yama Moto Yama, where you can relax under a red parasol for a tea ceremony at a specialty tea purveyor that has been in business in Japan since 1690. For only $3, learn the etiquette of sipping a cup of frothy matcha green tea. Thus caffeinated (the Japanese revered tea as a stimulant when it was first introduced to them in the 8th century), head north about a mile on Western Avenue, past Sunflower Farms, Weber’s Bread factory and a mobile home park, crossing under Interstate 405 to 182nd Street. In one of the area’s many unnamed strip malls, have a look at Bonjour for a fine example of Japan’s take on the French patisserie.

Owners Yuji and Miki Shiraki display framed photographs of Shaquille O’Neal eating one of their creations. Worth trying are the Green Tea Mousse Cake, at $2.80, served with Earl Grey tea in Villeroy & Boch china, or the amusingly named Profit Roll: a cluster of choux pastry balls slicked with chocolate and almonds. In the same unprepossessing mall, Sen Nari serves decent sushi, and Sanuki No Sato has reputable noodles. But for an authentic taste of Tokyo, drive 16 blocks north to Otafuku, where master noodle-maker Seiji Akutsu serves thick, chewy udon, delicate zarusoba buckwheat noodles and seiro, a fine-textured noodle similar in size to angel hair pasta, with hefty portions of thick-batter tempura. His hot broth is flavored with mitsuba, or trefoil, a Japanese herb that is a cross between parsley and cilantro.

Everywhere, lunch counters fill early. It’s common to arrive at a restaurant at, say, 11:50 a.m., and look up minutes later to find every seat taken. Sushi devotees believe that midday is the best time to arrive for the freshest fish. So if you arrive at 1 p.m., expect to wait.

Traveling west on Redondo Beach Boulevard, you’ll pass several more malls. The first is Tozai Plaza, which presents an opportunity at Quick Massage for a shiatsu massage (30 minutes for $20) or a glimpse of wall-to-wall Asian teenagers hooked up to video games--plus another mother lode of eateries.

At Tsukiji, known for its excellent sushi, the chef’s mother arrives around midafternoon with lunch for him, including a boiled egg and a salt shaker, in a plastic bag; she leaves with two containers of dipping sauce. “That is Japanese mother,” he explains.

The sushi here fills the tables with regulars at lunch, including four Japanese women who discuss their husbands over little bowls of chopped iceberg lettuce salad. On the counters are trays of sweet inari sushi--fingers of sticky rice stuffed into pouches of fried bean curd, a popular picnic or snack food without the sinus-clearing wasabi used in the better-known nigiri sushi. Their sweetness is not quite that of dessert, but they are often served as part of lunch combinations with miso soup and noodles.

Next door is Kotohira, which serves homemade udon in a clubby room decorated in dubious taste with posters of Princess Diana, the Statue of Liberty and of Leda embraced by Zeus. If the art doesn’t put you off--and it shouldn’t because the lunch combinations of noodles with pickles and miso soup are good--save some room for Se Nue, a Franco-Japanese bakery a few steps away (with another store in downtown L.A.). Among its specialties are crispy doughnut balls rolled in black sesame seeds or milk chocolate, soft palm-sized mochi cakes and a restorative iced green tea latte the color of melted mint ice-cream.

If it’s late in the day, retrace your steps to the intersection of Western Avenue and Carson Street to Eastgate Plaza, the hub of culinary nightlife. Here, Asian groovers in their 20s spill onto the parking lot outside Musha, a noisy pub-like place known for its Pan-Asian dishes, where customers can cook dried squid or triangular fishcakes with the texture of marshmallows over a barbecue ( shi-chi-rin ) shaped like a clay chimney pot. Or, if your budget can stand it, make a reservation at Kappo Seafood, where you’ll find a selection of some of Japan’s most refined kappo-style cooking as well as top-quality sushi, fine noodles and even some “fusion” food, including a mushroom pot pie made with buttery puff pastry. This is a place to be intrepid. The restaurant is the most formal around-the waitresses dress in navy cotton kimonos and tread softly in white socks and traditional sandals. Ask the waiters for advice-and don’t worry if their translations from the Japanese-only menu of daily specials are inexact. You might end thrilled with crunchy chunks of fried eel bone or tatami iwashi, literally a crisp, lightly toasted “mat” of anchovy fry, and a tempura ball of juicy ground shrimp.

For a restaurant that specializes in tempura, there’s Komatsu, a 3-year-old bar owned by Hiroshi Komatsu a couple of blocks north. With metal chopsticks, he expertly cooks each piece to order. Among the best are mushrooms stuffed with shrimp, fresh shiso leaves and juicy whitefish, served with a selection of three salt mixtures for dipping: one plain; another flavored with shredded yuzu, a citrus fruit similar to lime; and another mixed with powdered green tea.

For more excellent made-to-order tempura, try Inaba, a sunny upscale all-round restaurant on Hawthorne Boulevard near Torrance Boulevard. Its kitchen is open, allowing curious diners a bird’s-eye view of the precise work of the four bustling chefs, each responsible for a different part of the kitchen-noodles, sushi, tempura and other cooked dishes. A few doors down in the same strip mall, next to a Tool City and a Mongolian barbecue joint is Takefuku, a cheerful cash-only noodle restaurant with framed chopsticks on the walls and popular early bird specials.

Or, from Tozai Plaza, try a U-turn and pull up in Pacific Square, a once futuristic-looking structure where a busy Chinese restaurant obscures the door to Fukagawa. Its windows advertise soba and udon, although my Japanese friends rave about the incredible value of its all-you-can-eat shabu shabu --served evenings only--the cook-it-yourself hotpot of beef and vegetables offset by chili-laced minced daikon radish and green onions. Friendly waitresses bring bowls of ponzu and sesame sauces for dipping the leaves of cabbage, bundles of enoki mushrooms, tofu and platters of raw beef retrieved from the boiling broth. If you like, slip off your shoes and sit cross-legged on thin cushions at a low table, a popular style of eating at many of the area’s noodle bars and a more relaxed version of seating in private tatami rooms in more expensive restaurants.

This section of Redondo Beach Boulevard, bang in the middle of Gardena, is home to a Target store and two noodle places popular with Japanese Americans and others who like ramen, or Chinese-style yellow wheat noodles served in hot soup. At the rowdy Hakata Ramen Shinsengumi, in a hard-to-spot strip mall fronted by a Haruni Bank, waiters clad judo-style in black bellow greetings at the door. The oddest item is a Spam-rice roll, liked by Hawaiian customers, while among the best is minced pork dumplings. Children love the live yellow-bellied turtles in a tank near the communal dining table, a preview of what they can see at the South Bay Aquarium store. Nearby in a former Taco Bell, is brightly-lit Umemura, which serves noodles in miso broth.

No Japanese food tour would be complete without yakitori, literally “grilled chicken.” At Torimatsu, a mile southeast on Artesia Boulevard, men in suits slip off their jackets as the heat of the chef’s brazier rises over the counter.

For anyone who thinks that “chicken parts” mean legs, thighs and breast, Torimatsu’s menu is a lesson in ingenuity. A dimly lighted space in a modern strip mall at the intersection of Normandie and Artesia, the restaurant serves the many kinds of kebabs beloved in Japan, where homeward-bound workers eat them as snacks with cold beer. Very few people rush for trains here, of course, but the service is so fast you could pretend to be. Skewers of motsu (chicken liver) arrive rose-pink and juicy as if speared through by a flat wooden dagger.

Other offerings include three quail eggs, boiled and grilled, on a stick, soft bite-sized chunks of nasu (marinated eggplant) and parts of the chicken that are rarely identified. Among them: bonbochi (the tail), kawa (broiled chicken skin), nankotsu (translated as “soft bone”) and tebasaki (the tip of a chicken wing). Especially good are the kebabs of tiny hot green peppers and lotus root, which comes as two crunchy wheel-like circles, the tiny lozenge-shaped holes between its spokes stuffed with ground chicken.

Right next door is Kanpachi, a popular 19th hole for players from the nearby Alondra Golf Course seeking an inexpensive sushi fix. Owner and chef Takashi Kido, dapper in a maroon kimono-style shirt and blue cotton hat, jokes that his Stamina Bowl, a $9.95 carbohydrate-loaded, high-protein portion of sticky rice, raw monkfish liver, strips of tuna and salty salmon roe, will keep you energized for “up to two hours.”

Several blocks away, in a down-on-its-luck strip mall, is Tombo, beloved by students and other budget-conscious diners for its griddle-cooked pancakes called o-konomiyaki, usually translated as “the noble as-you-like-it grilled thing.”

Personally, I don’t warm to their charms, but if you like a thick bland pancake made mostly with onions, white cabbage and some shredded ginger, this is your place. Traditionally eaten with mustard, mayonnaise, a thick version of Worcestershire sauce and something akin to A-1, they’re about as far as you can get from the clean, delicate tastes for which so much of Japanese food is famous. Nicknamed “GI food,” they’re reportedly popular with anyone misty-eyed for postwar poverty food from Osaka.

Find previous articles at https://www.calendarlive.com/authentic.

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Far East Flavor in South Bay

In Torrance:

Mitsuwa Marketplace, 21515 Western Ave., (310) 782-0335.

Restaurants inside:

Minamoto Kitchoan, (310) 782-0335

Miyabi-tei, (310) 533-1517

Mifune, (310) 782-1382

Daikichi Sushi, (310) 782-0335

Mikawaya, (310) 320-4551 (other branch at 1630 W. Redondo Beach Blvd., Gardena)

St Honore, phone not available.