Hello. Friend and I are looking to get some sushi (or poke) tomorrow for lunch. Friend specifically said she would be more interested in quantity instead of quality. But I would also prefer something not super depressing. Ambiance is totally unimportant. Anywhere from Pico-Roberston to Sawtelle is fine.
Is Hide still good? I’ve read about Hamasaku, but they close at 2PM. We’d probably like to sit right up until 2PM; will that be a problem for the restaurant?
I’ve never tried Sugarfish. Would it be good for such a lunch?
This is just past Sawtelle but Takao on San Vicente has incredible lunch specials. $3x for their sushi special. $2x for bento meals. Everything is high quality and super consistent across dozens of visits. Somewhere like Noma - which I also enjoy - may be a few bucks less but is not the same level of quality. Open til 2:30 but they’ll let you hang around a bit longer. Indoor and outdoor seating.
Masakazu Sushi (Westwood Blvd., near Izakaya Hero). Masakazu is usually open til 3:30PM for lunch. On the Tock reservation site, choose “A La Carte” if you want, but there is a good QPR omakase option available as well.
Friend decided she was more in the mood for Persian, so we ate at Shamshiri (which I’ll post about in the rundown; maybe I just went on an off day many yrs ago, but yesterday’s meal was VASTLY better than the last trip there).
Looking forward to trying the recs above… eventually.
New place called Nigiriba in Culver City at Ivy Station. Main options are omakase, like Sugarfish. They do have a short à la carte menu.
QPR is good. They manage that by cutting corners in sushi preparation, again, similar to Sugarfish. No sushi chefs; in fact nigiri rice is molded by a machine, and nigiri assembly is done by trained employees. Limited list of beer/sake.
But they seemingly try hard to source high quality fish. And the preparations aren’t covered in sweet sauces, tempura flakes, and avocado. More traditional, I’d say, than Sugarfish (apologies to be a broken record but that is going to be what it’s compared to). In fact I’d say it’s more like a nigiri version of Kazunori…
Anyway, Kanpachi was apparently from Hawaii; Salmon, Scotland; Bluefin, Mexico; and that’s all I was able to gather.
