G. Snyder

Tsukemen at Tsujita L.A.

Leading up to this year's Best of L.A. issue (due out Oct. 4), we'll be counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes.

97: Tsukemen at Tsujita L.A.

Since opening last August, Little Osaka's Tsujita L.A. has quickly become the most serious purveyor of Hakata tonkotsu in town, a fact validated by the noodle-loving crowds waiting outside the building around opening time. Though it serves its ramen only during an abbreviated lunch hour -- out of concern that the dish's popularity would overshadow the dinner-time kaiseki menu -- the lengthy wait list for a table can often rival something out of the UCLA admissions department.

Head chef Kenta Ikehata once described to us the great pains he took to master his pork bone broth, a recipe he spent years perfecting in Japan. It was like raising a kitten, he said. If that's true, then the other item available at lunch, a bowl of thick slippery noodles and an intense thickened dipping broth called tsukemen, might be akin to a sabertooth tiger.

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A. Scattergood

Oden with daikon and konjac at Morinoya

If you get tired of American comfort food, you might consider comfort food from Japan -- by which we do not mean, at least at the moment, ramen and curry rice. One of the most comforting of Japanese comfort food dishes is oden, a bowl of broth in which has been simmered many things, notably fish cakes and eggs, tofu and daikon and other vegetables. In Japan you can order oden in restaurants, buy sets of the components in grocery stores and, perhaps best of all, find steaming tubs of the stuff in convenience stores. Yep, walk into any Tokyo 7-Eleven (there are lots of them) and you'll find, next to packets of baumkuchen, simmering vats of oden dangerously close to the cash registers.

Sadly, no oden at the 7-Eleven in Los Angeles. But go to Morinoya, newly opened in the Little Osaka neighborhood along Sawtelle, and you'll find bowls of oden far, far better than those you'd get in any convenience store, even one in Harajuku.

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G. Snyder

Gottsui Okonomiyaki

That new metro stop whose opening you've been awaiting: not complete. Those suspension-shredding chuckholes on your street: not filled. But there is still good news. It's not as hard to find good Japanese okonomiyaki in Los Angeles these days as it once was. Even a hardened cynic must admit that's some sort of civic progress.

For a long time there was only Gaja Moc, a rowdy space in Torrance where families could satiate their deepest Benihana fantasies by ladling out cabbage-thickened batter onto a tabletop grill, customizing it with a desired handful of ingredients -- yam, scallop, cheese, green onion, anything really -- then flip the whole mess with what resembles a miniaturized snow shovel. The process felt a bit like assembling a stack of Sunday morning pancakes, though it would seem doubtful you'd be sipping a pitcher of Kirin then.

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djjewelz/Flickr

Sushi

There is chef Jiro Ono, in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, dedicating 75 years of his life to the art of sushi, making and serving only one piece at a time at his tiny restaurant in Japan, and then there is this: Sushi robots that churn out 300 medium-sized rolls per hour, or rice mounds for nigiri at 3,600 mph. That's mounds per hour, although it's probably just a matter of time before someone combines these robots with Google's self-driving car to create a vehicle that rolls sushi as you roll through traffic.

According to Wired, Japanese company Suzumo unveiled its sushi robots recently at the World Food and Beverage Great Expo 2012 in Tokyo. One robot is dedicated to making nigiri sushi: It scoops up the rice, quickly shapes it in the proper oblong form and places it on a tray, ready to be topped with slices of fish. "It does not cut even a grain of rice when forming," a Suzumo representative tells Wired. Meanwhile, another robot makes sushi rolls by flattening the rice onto wrappers and rolling them once the filling is placed.

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If this does not make you hungry, well, then there's not much we can do for you. The ramen -- they also have rice bowls and gyoza and tsukemen -- at Yamadaya is of the kind that won't leave you needing more food for some time. It is a study in pork more than noodles, although the noodles are excellent too. Rivulets of garlic oil, dark as crude oil, move around the surface of the bowl. The usual accouterments, plus lovely halved eggs that are cooked properly, their interiors dark orange and supple like mollets. Pork and more pork. If there was any doubt that the primary focus here is pig, the menu above, regenerated in word-cloud form, should put an end to that.

There are four Yamadaya iterations to date (Torrance, Culver City, Westwood, Costa Mesa), with a fifth one scheduled to open Sunday, April 1 (we do not joke about ramen), in Sherman Oaks at the corner of Ventura and Sepulveda. Go get a bowl of tsukemen (prounounced "ske-men") on your way back from Mammoth this weekend. Exactly.

Hand Rolls

Flickr/Thompson Chan

If you're planning to see David Gelb's brilliant documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi this weekend when it premieres at Santa Monica's Nuart Theater you might be well advised to pass on the popcorn and soda. The film clocks in at just under an hour and a half -- a good portion of which is dedicated to sweeping shots of immaculately cut slabs of fish, buttery lozenges of uni and plump, wriggling shrimp plucked from the ocean that morning. If your appetite is anything like ours, you'll be leaving the theater with an intense craving for proper sushi. Call it the "Jiro Effect."

After seeing the inner workings of what is perhaps the world's greatest sushi restaurant, it might be difficult to settle for a plate of crunchy rolls and dynamite shrimp. In that case, your best option is probably omakase, a pseudo-tasting menu that entails hanging up any vestiges of skepticism and entrusting a sushi chef to tailor a menu using the highest quality ingredients available that day. If you find yourself sitting at the sushi bar, watching your chef construct a meal in front of you -- highly recommended -- a great omakase meal can evoke a feeling of exclusiveness that will put any Hollywood nightclub to shame. That level of intimacy doesn't always come cheap: A single dinner can induce a level of sticker shock reserved for hospital bills and car repairs (Jiro's omakase runs about $400 per person, a tad more than Urasawa's price of $375).

The good new is that a reasonably priced omakase experience is entirely possible -- in fact, many sushi chefs are more than content to customize a meal based around your optimal budget and tastes. It might not be as inexpensive as sushi that comes off a conveyor belt, but you won't be dropping entire paychecks, either. Here are our preferred "entry-level" spots for when we crave a traditional Edo-style sushi experience, sans the second mortgage. Turn the page for a list of the town's 4 best bargain omakase. (In alphabetical order.)

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arnold | inuyaki/Flickr

Kyochon's fried chicken

In our last handy food flowchart, we tried to point you in the right direction for those times when you just need a bowl of phở to comfort your soul. Today, our flowchart helps you navigate the city when you're in search of another type of comforting soul food: fried chicken. And because sometimes you want that chicken with a side of kimchi pancakes or Japanese pub grub, we threw in a few suggestions that will satisfy your craving by way of Koreatown or the local izakaya.

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Magnolia Pictures

The film Jiro Dreams of Sushi follows sushi master Jiro Ono, whose Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat, sushi-only restaurant located in a Tokyo subway station, is the first of its kind to earn three Michelin stars. For his unparalleled skill and relentless perfectionism, he's considered by many to be the best sushi chef in the world, though at 86 years old people are beginning to wonder how long he can continue to work.

The first documentary feature from 28-year-old director David Gelb, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a portrait of true craftsmanship, as well as love and legacy. It relishes in sweeping shots around the kitchen and tight portraits of fish, the kinetic energy of preparation and the beautiful if momentary stillness of the finished product. The art and philosophy of a perfect bite.

A little more than a week in advance of his Los Angeles opening -- March 16 at the Nuart -- Gelb took some time to talk with Squid Ink about the mechanics of making eel dissection look elegant, the importance of rice and how he talked his way into a tuna auction.

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Kathy A. McDonald

Kikusui Junmai Ginjo at Far Bar in Little Toyko

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the March 11 catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that so terribly damaged Japan. Food-safety issues and scares -- particularly around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor -- remain in the news.

Although Japan's traditional sake brewers were hard hit (and 250 breweries directly affected), the indigenous beverage has become a symbol of national pride and renewal. Like the rest of the nation, sake brewers are resilient. Sake World's John Gauntner writes in his monthly sake newsletter, "Every single brewery damaged or destroyed has somehow managed to pick themselves up and continue to make sake this year" He terms it nothing short of miraculous.

In Japan, drinking sake, particular sake from Tohoku the heavily damaged northern region of the country, became a way to support those most affected by the disaster. (Fundraisers in Los Angeles last year benefited some of those breweries as well). Notably sake shipments are up in certain areas, as Japan's homegrown alcoholic brew helps fuel the country's recovery.

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Japan Airlines

Yoshinoya beef bowls on select Japan Airlines flights

Eikichi Matsuda opened Yoshinoya in 1899, in a fish market outside Edo Castle in Chuoku, Tokyo. Over the following century or so, the company expanded well beyond fish markets in Japan and, starting this month, its presence will extend to the skies. From now until May 31, Yoshinoya will offer its signature beef bowls on select Japan Airlines flights between Tokyo and major international cities, including Los Angeles.

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