I’ve never been to Japan but will still share my thoughts.
First part of OP’s question: What does the food media get wrong? As others have pointed out, it’s ignoring or downplaying neighborhoods that aren’t close to the “relevant” parts of LA, as a friend of mine half-jokingly refers to Santa Monica, Westside, Silverlake, DTLA, etc . To be fair this problem is not exclusive to coverage of Japanese food, but the food/restaurant scene in general. Some publications are a lot worse than others (like Eater), but food coverage seems to focus on restaurants with PR teams that open in the “cool” parts of town and have a “name” behind them. (I don’t practice journalism but I’m sure it’s easier to write articles about places that send you talking points from a PR team instead of doing your own research and exploring random places before you find a gem worth telling others about.) When you see these lists of “best of” this or that, it’s like the SFV or South Bay barely exist, which is ridiculous because there are incredible places in these huge swaths of Southern California. Furthermore, the more affordable hole-in-the-wall, mom and pop operations that, in my opinion, make LA such an exciting place to eat have a harder time existing in the cool neighborhoods because of the much higher rent. Maybe I’m a little bit of a conspiracy theorist, but I think that the reason Korean food and Thai food get pretty decent coverage is because Koreatown and Thai Town are a lot closer to the cool hipster neighborhoods than Torrance is. Some friends of mine in Silverlake often eat in Koreatown or Thai Town, but when I try to get them to come to the South Bay (where I live) or explore the SFV or Little Saigon, they blankly stare at me like I asked them to fly to Mars to grab a donut. I don’t think these friends of mine are unusual among our Millennial peers who also gobble up “food media”, and maybe I’m being an reverse-elitist for questioning why someone isn’t willing to drive 45 minutes to eat okinomiyaki at Doya Doya, but it kind of irks me when self-proclaimed foodies are not as curious or as adventurous when it comes to exploring random neighborhoods. I could go on and on but I think some people don’t choose where to eat but are rather are told where to eat, and are thus careened towards the places where the PR-influenced food media tells them to go to.
As far as what Japanese places I think are really special (even though I’ve never been to Japan), it’s places like Sakae Sushi in Gardena (which Eater did profile!), Koshiji in Torrance for yakitori, Monjiro Monzo for tempura and udon, Doya Doya for okinomiyaki, Inaba for soba, etc. I really love Azuma Izakaya in Gardena. It’s a jack of all trades but admittedly a master of none, and I wouldn’t drive an hour to eat there, but the combination of comforting food, fair prices, relaxed atmosphere, spirit, and scrappiness make it one of my favorite restaurants. Chowseeker1999 has done incredible write ups on places in the South Bay I really need to try, like Shoya in Lomita, Fukuno for sushi in Gardena, or Wadatsumi in Torrance. There have been other interesting write ups about sushi in the South Bay that I want to try, like Kurisaki in Redondo Beach, Nozomi in Torrance or Sushi Chintose in Redondo. And my beloved Kansha Creamery in Gardena regularly has matcha ice cream, but also on occasion black sesame ice cream, strawberry miso ice cream, and other flavors. I live in the South Bay and am a South Bay native, so I have a bias, but I think the dynamics of the area (large Japanese and Japanese-American populations, more affordable rents, etc) have come together over several decades to create an environment where hole-in-the-wall, mom-and-pop places have an opportunity to turn out an incredible variety of compelling Japanese food that can’t really be matched when compared as a whole to other parts of LA.
I’m no “expert,” but I’ve been happily eating Japanese food in L.A. since my youth, and I’ve been to multiple regions of Japan over the last 15 years and 20 or so trips.
