Bellying Up to the Bar
The once-flourishing Japanese enclave on Centinela Avenue south of Washington Boulevard has dwindled over the years, but Sakura remains, as it has for 50 years.
Rather than declining, its business is booming. Friday lunches are mobbed. Even on weekdays, there’s a wait for tables at dinner. Janis Toya and her husband, Sam Nitao, took over the restaurant three years ago. The ambience is neighborly, not hip, and Toya, the hostess, works hard at making customers happy.
Friday lunch may be mostly a guy thing--the sort of guys you see in TV ads for beer and pizza. One night, a little girl, not more than 6 or 7, sat at the sushi bar with her father while a large group took over a row of tables for an informal banquet. The dress code is casual--jeans, sweats, baseball caps.
Sakura serves hearty, moderately priced combinations that appeal to families, couples on dates, and all ages. Main dishes such as sukiyaki or tonkatsu (pork cutlet) come with miso soup, salad, tsukemono (pickles), rice and a choice of tempura or sashimi.
A bento-box lunch combines two or three entrees, depending on what you want to pay, with soup, salad, pickles, rice and tea.
The dishes I liked best came from the appetizer list and the menu posted beside the sushi bar--subtle, delicate food such as oshitashi, which is blanched spinach formed into a tight roll and topped with a shower of golden bonito flakes, and agedashi tofu--fried tofu in a bowl of broth, topped with seaweed shreds and grated daikon.
Hamachi kama--broiled yellowtail collar--comes with a bowl of ponzu soy sauce for dipping. The meat is moist and sweet, chewier at the narrow end of this bony cut. (Salmon collar tends to be rather dry, though.)
Baked scallop with dynamite sauce and mushrooms is strewn with smelt roe, adding a staccato crunch to the creamy sauce. Green mussels are fixed the same way.
Mountain scallops are Japanese white mushrooms that look surprisingly like sea scallops. The mushrooms are served sushi-style, banded to rice with a strip of seaweed.
Giant clam (geoduck) is chewy, delicate and almost sweet as sushi. It also appears in a hot appetizer with mushrooms and asparagus, flawed by a slight floury taste from whatever coated the slices.
Get the fresh albacore sushi when available. The fish is naturally sweet, so don’t put soy sauce on it--the ponzu sauce under the rice is all it needs. Yellowtail belly sushi is just as pleasing.
Ume shiso roll is a salted plum wrapped in a shiso leaf, rather salty unless you’re an ume fan. The Philadelphia roll pairs raw salmon and cream cheese. The Alaska roll caters to those who like sushi-type dishes but not raw seafood, because the salmon is baked. “Football” (inari) is a fried bean-curd pouch stuffed with rice; not as dull as it sounds--it’s sweet, as appealing as a candy snack.
An earthen bowl holds tuna sumiso (tuna sashimi) flanked by seaweed shreds, finely cut cucumber, daikon and a shiso leaf. The sweet sauce is vinegar mixed with miso. Oysters are also served this way or in shooters.
Tempura (available as an appetizer or a main dish) is not this restaurant’s best dish. The first time I ordered it, the batter had a stale taste, probably from the frying oil. The second time the flavor improved, but the texture was less than crisp. The teriyaki here is less interesting than saba shioyaki: broiled, lightly salted mackerel.
Spicy salad is far spicier than you would expect of Japanese food. It’s shredded lettuce tossed with cucumber, carrot, radish sprouts, octopus, shrimp, sesame seeds, and a dressing that includes ponzu and sesame oil.
Yebisu, a Japanese beer that can stand up to these flavors, is available, and so are green tea, wine and sake. The only dessert is ice cream, plain or coated with mochi.
Sakura Japanese Restaurant, 4545 Centinela Ave., Los Angeles. (310) 822-7790. Lunch, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; dinner, 5:30-10 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 5-10 p.m. Saturday, and 5-9 p.m. Sunday. Wine and beer. Parking lot behind the restaurant. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $21 to $34. Main dishes and combinations, $8.75 to $16.75.
What to Get: Fresh albacore sushi, giant clam sushi, mountain scallop sushi, yellowtail belly sushi, hamachi kama, scallop with dynamite sauce and mushrooms, giant clam sauteed with asparagus and mushrooms, oshitashi, agedashi tofu, spicy salad, saba shioyaki.