I don’t hate the place at all; I think it’s a chill California-Japanese lounge that’s a great drinking spot in particular, and I like that they’re taking some chances with the food. But N/naka is well-liked because Chef Nakayama is fusing Japanese ingredients with Western preparations, but doing some good justice to balancing the ingredients. Her abalone pasta, for example, is itameshi, but it’s well-balanced between the rich abalone cream sauce and bitter kaiware stems. I actually think her most successful dishes have been the ones which are not traditional washoku. I don’t think her sushi is all that good. From the intention, it’s California-inflected Japanese, a Western Kaiseki of sorts, and the menu reflects that well.
Shibumi, by its name, is invoking a Japanese aesthetic that turns on simple elegance. The concept of “shibumi” is at the heart of washoku, but it’s a tough task to pull off well. It requires really confident cooking that lets the ingredients’ inherence shine. Perhaps in LA, there has to be some middle ground because real washoku can be a bit austere. They have some more traditional preparations - e.g. an old school sauce like irizake, some funky tsukemono like nara-zuke, etc. but at times the food felt a bit busy. Nonetheless, there is potential, because the intention is there. But doing shibumi justice is very tough to do, and billing itself as kappo cuisine and calling itself Shibumi sets expectations quite high.
The Iwakagi Oyster I had, for example, was saline and meaty, but it had too much yuzu juice. Tonburi (“land caviar”) is a nice delicacy, but it was masked by the citrus.
Tai is a fish that’s prized for its delicate, clean deep flavor. Here, it was served with ume irizake, which makes a lot of sense, but there was too much myoga (young ginger) that again resulted in the main ingredient being masked. It was a very nice looking dish, but the fish was obscured by the condiments. The tai flavor was to be fortified by a gel of the fish, but in terms of overall execution, this one missed the mark a bit. If this was a seared, richer fish, this dish would be more successful, but I think the use of a delicate fish like tai was intentional.
Again, Shibumi sets the bar high for itself. They are doing much to mimic Japanese kappo food, but perhaps they’ve had to make some concessions to introduce this kind of cuisine to LA, and that’s where some may be lost in translation.
I think Gold is excited by the novelty of kappo food being tried in LA. I also never got the sense that Gold is all that knowledgable about Japanese food or washoku in particular, even if he’s a good writer.