Sushi Ginza Onodera - OOE Omakase

Americas - USA West Los Angeles
121

That seems right.

NY was usually half full when I went there. Same-day reservations were a trivial matter.

While LA was not a hard-to-get reservation, every time I went, it was full capacity or nearly so.

We still have a glut of good sushi in LA–at least eight places I wholeheartedly recommend and others that are quite good–so this is no great loss.

1 Like
122

I don’t have insider information on this, just making an inference because it never seemed empty. Sure the rent on that block isn’t cheap but SGO has more than enough to cover it. If anything the parent company recently bought one of the most expensive tuna and was distributing it across branches…that would likely suggest it wasn’t directly a revenue issue.

Yes, and everyone was ordering alcohol off the list as well (they stopped corkage a while back).

With that said, the NY and LA branches never felt as personal as the Honolulu one; maybe it was the buildout. Plus you may or may not get the head chef unless you request. My favorite experiences were probably with:

  1. Mizutani-san (Honolulu branch, now of his Sushi Shinsuke in Tokyo)
  2. Matsuura-san (Honolulu branch, now of his Sushi Matsuura in Tokyo)
  3. Saito-san (New York branch, now of his Sushi Masaki Saito in Toronto)
  4. Matsuki-san (Los Angeles branch)
  5. Suzuki-san (Honolulu branch then New York, now of his Icca in NYC)
  6. Sakagami-san (global head chef)
  7. Various sous chefs
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123

not enough business. Lease was up, they decided not to renew. Been in the works for a couple months. In the most japanese way possible, they let their vendors know early on. I’m sure the loss of the star had something to do with the corporate decision as well

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124

Ah interesting. They seemed full whenever I passed by but thanks for the correction. I imagine the Honolulu property is much cheaper.

At least this was a nice move by them.

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