Deericious!

This entry has been a long time coming. Kagaya is my favorite restaurant in LA, maybe. That is a bold statementfor me since there are so many restaurants I love. What makes it so great? The food obviously, the service, and the fact that you can’t find anything else like it in the LA area (at least not that I know of). Kagaya is a small, upscale shabu shabu restaurant where patrons must make a reservation in advance for a coveted seat at the bar or one of the few tables.

Dinners consist of 3 appetizers (1 is always a soup/broth), a plate of vegetables and glass noodles, the main beef or seafood plate, choice of rice porridge or udon, and dessert. If I remember correctly, the regular wagyu beef is priced at $46pp. Prices go all the way up to approx. $100pp if you order the kobe beef or seafood platter. The kobe is good, but for me, kobe is too marbled to have as shabu shabu. I usually get the wagyu/seafood combo and am quite content with my selection.

Every time I eat at Kagaya, I am most impressed by the creativity/uniqueness of the appetizers. Perhaps the dishes are not so inventive to some, but for me they certainly are. Think iron chef type appetizers that you generally don’t get unless you are 1) dining at Sushi Sushi (which ties Kagaya for my favorite restaurant in LA) or 2) dining in Japan. On our latest visit over Thanksgiving weekend, we started with a toro-daikon tartare (5*), white mackerel brothy soup (4.5*), broiler crab cakes topped with shimeji mushroom in bonito broth (5* omg this was so good!!).

After the appetizers are devoured and plates taken away, the chef or his assistant will set you up nicely to begin the shabu shabu. Everyone gets their own clam shell looking silver bowl to cook in, and the heat is controlled so you have a gentle rolling boil throughout the entire meal. The chef/assistant will even scoop out the meat scum from the soup for you as you’re eating! Two dipping sauces - sesame and ponzu, nothing extra special about these. The combo plate comes with 5 pcs of beef (very little, i know but you’re still stuffed at the end of the meal), one king crab leg, 2-3 clams, and 1 oyster. After this, we still had a bit more room (planning for the rice porridge and dessert) so we ordered the Alaskan king crab special - same as the crab leg included in our combos but fresh, not frozen, and uncooked. The plate came a few minutes later, with an even bigger crab leg, more clams, and 2 oysters. Don’t be mislead my friend - although this appeared to be another addition of our previous order minus the beef, the raw king crab legs cooked for just under a minute were a million times tastier! Yummy! 5* for this one, no doubt. <<Note to self, be sure to ask how much the special is before you order it next time. The king crab special was $90!>>

When you’re done with the cooking portion of the meal, the chef will ask if you prefer rice porridge or udon. I always go with the rice porridge - I like it much better. Once you’ve made your selection, the chef brings another silver bowl over to your burner and starts making the porridge/udon for you. First bring the broth to a boil, then add rice/udon as well as some ginger water, picked plum, egg drop, and parsley. Usually, I am too full to finish this so we have it packed to go for breakfast the next day. Time for dessert!

For dessert, you can choose one of the following: creme brulee, apple tart w/ carmel ice cream, banana tart, strawberry sorbet (who in their right mind would forgoe the other choices and pick this?!), or matcha (green tea) mousse. It’s pretty difficult to pass up the creme brulee because all through the meal, you can smell the chef buring the sugar tops right in front of you. Mmm, my favorite! Still, I almost always pick the apple tart. The bottom is not your traditional pastry - it’s more like layers of filo over a light coffee/carmel sauce (4.5*). Writing this is making me drool…

Kagaya really is a gem - try it, you’ll like it!

This post is for Miss Tang… =)

For those of you who love fish tacos and get your fix from Rubios, Wahoo’s, etc. you are sadly missing out. Taco Nazo, is hands down, the best fish taco in LA. Not just according to me obviously…

Amanda discovered this place while she was contracting at Edison. She would have Taco Nazo multiple times a week and before long, she really got me wondering about this place. It’s a real hole in the wall - hidden away in an asian style strip mall (the kind with the tacky chinese shingles on the roof top), between a pet store and a pho restaurant. I haven’t had the chance to stop by recently, but I think they may have expanded and moved into a new location down the street from their original joint in El Monte. Come to think of it, I think the owners have branched out and opened multiple new locations!

Taco Nazo is popular for its fish tacos, but I always see long-time customers order the papas tacos (potato tacos). I’m curious, but I’ve never tried these simply because I go with a gazer-beam focus set on the fish tacos only. I can eat 3-4 of these, no kidding! Don’t forget to ask for extra pico de gallo, a la Sunkai.

There’s really no way to describe how/why these suckers are so good. You’ll just have to see for yourself one of these days when you are conveniently passing through the city of South El Monte.

Greetings, friends! It’s holiday season and you know what that means… it’s time to break out the elastic waist pants and start dialing for reservations at my favorite restaurants! This past weekend we ventured to Chez Panisse for a special holiday dinner. (I’ll make up any excuse to go there.) Our first experience at Chez Panisse in August was near perfect (the raviolli fritti was a bit dry) and I was really looking forward to another flawlessly executed meal. Right when we walked in, I knew we were in for another great experience. (Of course! We’re at Chez Panisse!) Something about the people and lighting of the place really makes you feel at ease and really ready to enjoy a great meal.

Before we were seated at our table, we were led upstairs to wait at the bar for just a few minutes. Like last time, I ordered with a fruit soda which consisted of sour cherry syrup and sparkling water. My goodness, this was really good! (I think last time I had the elderflower soda which was equally refreshing.) Sounds strange, but oddly I really look forward to trying the different sodas here. They’re small, so you won’t feel too full before dinner. Here comes the host, let’s head off to dinner downstairs!

On the menu:

An apertif: some sort of sweet cognac concoction that was really quite tasty. Rei didn’t like it so I glady drank his too (3*).

Goat cheese and herb souffle with rocket salad (3* souffle - good, but I was expecting something really marvelous, 4* salad - hard to tell with just a few rocket leaves but the dressing left me wanting to lick the plate)

Cioppino with local fish and Dungeness crab (3*). I was really looking forward to a more traditional tomato based cioppino, but this was really good too, especially the clams and mussels. The crab and fish were a bit tasteless though… surprisingly.

<<At this point in the meal, Rei and I started talking about how our first visit to Chez Panisse was seemingly much better. Enter the main entree and we quickly ate our words…>>

Grilled Sonoma County Poultry Guinea hen with Rhone wine sauce, green garlic and young leek risotto, and chantrelles (4.5*). Wow!! I’ve never had better chicken/Guinea hen, whatever the differnce may be. This consisted of grilled breast meat and roasted leg meat, both with super crispy skin under a velvety wine sauce. Perfection, ahhh.

Apple quince  puff pastry tartlet  with muscat sabayon (4.5*). Again, simple but just right. The pastry was not too sweet, not too fruity, and the sabayon added the right amount of creaminess without overpowering the tartlet. Rei really loved this and inhaled his plate in about 3 seconds.

Oh, and don’t forget to finish off the meal with pressed coffee for two. Our server even gave us two pieces of raspberry truffle and pistachio cookies!

Since this was a special occassion meal, we brought a bottle of a great Pinot Noir we discovered at Duckhorn Vineyards in Napa - Goldeneye 2003, Anderson Valley. Not sure, but I think this may have been a single vintage (my memory fails me, especially after two consecutive days of wine tasting). I wish we had purchased more than just the six bottles we left with. These babies go fast!

If you haven’t tried Chez Panisse, do make an effort to swing by at some point. I’m convinced that It truly is a great dining experience every time. Even though I may not always love all four of the courses on the menu that night, I feel that perhaps my expectations are too high becuase this place is so talked about and hard to get a reservation at. The prix-fixe dinner is $85pp, plus 17% gratuity, and taxes. Corkage is an additional $25. Not cheap, but this is definitely one of my favorite places to go for a nice treat.