Headlines

Sources: Some of the articles used herein are made available from the Japanese contents of 
"www.ajinavi.com" and a magazine "Voga" thanks to their permission with our translation.

Inaba

Torrance 

Inaba is located along Hawthorne Blvd., going south to 405, in the market plaza to your right. The restaurant is always full, both for lunch and for dinner, and there is a line even after 12:30 for lunch.  Its specialties are soba, sushi, and tempura. Especially tempura, deep-fried in small size, quickens your appetite with its look and fragrant smell.  We often come across ‘chef’s choice’ for nigiri, but here, in this restaurant, there is ‘chef’s choice’ for tempura, which is truly good.  Soba is also served with flour freshly ground in the morning.  There is also the elegant and traditional kaiseki cooking, a formal Japanese dinner.

 

A Door To Japan

 (from Los Angeles Times on March 27, 2002) 

  The minute I cross the threshold at I-naba, I'm overcome by déjà vu. In a Torrance mini-mall, I feel as if I've walked into a restaurant in a small Japanese town. It's a stylish place of dainty flower arrangements, slanted mirrors and mustard-yellow tablecloths. Delicate bamboo shades shield the windows. All you hear is hushed conversation and faint music—at least when the sizzling deep fryer momentarily falls silent.

   This spare dining room is not the only place to eat here, though. Hidden by curtains is a private tempura bar for customers who advance-order lavish yorokobi-an dinners. Slightly worn blue curtains hang above the main kitchen, but not so low as to hide what the chefs are doing. Mostly, they are frying. I-naba serves a wide range of hot and cold Japanese dishes as well as the obligatory sashimi first course for those with more to spend. But crisp, clean-tasting tempura is the main event here. It comes in elegant, complex set menus; you're supposed to work your way into tempura gradually (rarely, if ever, will you see a Japanese diner plunging directly into a fried food course).

    Tempura gozen ($30) starts with perfectly cut sashimi of tuna, yellowtail, white fish, geoduck and octopus, followed by a green salad tossed with a ginger vinaigrette. You also get a bowl of miso soup and a dish of chawan-mushi (a custard stocked with ginkgo nuts, shiitake, shrimp and fish). Then, and only then, comes some of the best tempura anywhere outside Japan. First, three long shrimp, tails pointing skyward, flanked by two pieces of boned sole. These are followed by a plate of batter-fried green beans, eggplant, onion, pumpkin and a hot pepper stuffed with a little ground beef. On the side, there is a dipping sauce laced with grated white radish. Steamed short-grain Japanese rice is served in a covered bowl. There are also salty homemade pickles (tsukemono) cured in rice wine with rock salt and basil. Expect to find tiny slices of cucumber, yellow radish and, if you're lucky, purple basil.

     There are options. Shrimp tempura gozen ($22) gets you some of the sashimi, no custard and fewer pieces of tempura. An assorted tempura course ($40), the largest of the tempura set menus, adds a second wave of tempura, cold soba noodles and an unexpected dessert, such as New York cheesecake. Still, tempura isn't all I-naba serves. One entire page of the menu is devoted to fried buckwheat noodles (soba) with toppings, cold with dipping sauce or hot in dashi, the familiar Japanese broth of dried bonito. There are bento dinner boxes, pressed sushi dinners and a variety of wonderful appetizers, a few of which have surprising touches. I-naba is proud that it makes its soba by hand. My favorite way to eat it here is ten-seiro ($9.50), for which the noodles are served cold on a wickerwork bamboo plate alongside a bowl of hot broth crowned with kaki-age, a deep-fried patty of chopped seafood and vegetables in tempura batter.

     The appetizer menu deserves notice. Washu-gyu is a clone of the incomparably tender Kobe beef raised in Oregon. It's cut into bite-sized chunks, broiled and served with dipping sauce. Oddly, it comes with a big scoop of American tuna salad, made with plenty of mayo. Perhaps the chef is attempting a Japanese take on vitello tonnato. Another appetizer is saikyoyaki, miso-marinated sea bass broiled in the oven. This is one of the best fish ideas anywhere, buttery and sweet with notes of caramel and smoke in every bite. If you feel adventurous, call a day in advance and order one of those yorokobi-an dinners (basically, Japanese tea ceremony food plus tempura dishes), which range in price from $40 to $70. As in any Japanese restaurant that serves tea ceremony food, it's impossible to predict what ingredients will appear in the meal, only that you can expect everything to be extremely fresh. And that tempura, in all its deep fried glory, will be the featured player in your dinner.

--MAX JACOBSON, Special to The Times

Address: 20920 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance 
Telephone: 310-371-6675
Hours: Thu.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-1:45 p.m.; Tue.-Sat., 5:30- 9:45 p.m.; Sun., 5-8:45 p.m. Closed Mon.

Japanese-noodle

Torrance

This is a soba restaurant, where you eat standing, in downtown Torrance. Freshly ground soba (buckwheat) flour from Nagano, a produce of Shinshu, is delivered in chilled container cargo.  The flour is kneaded every morning and served freshly boiled.  A full process of being ushered to your table, ordering, paying, and tipping is eliminated.  A method of paying beforehand and self-served tea is welcomed when you are a bit hungry and in a hurry.  When you are really hungry, we recommend ‘Lunch Special’.  It is a set menu with a choice of kakesobe or zarusoba plus either small donburi, onigiri, or inari.  Though the restaurant opened just recently, it is filled with customers.  It seems customers who came at the beginning brought other people along, and the other people brought some other people, spreading the news.  People on the way home from Mitsuwa also stop by.  Marine products from Hokkaido and various delicacies of Yamaya, a long-established store of mentaiko (salted hot cod’s roe) in Fukuoka, are also sold at the restaurant. 　

Japonica

Japanese cooking-creative cooking, dining bar

Redondo Beach 

Japonica, which just opened in August of this year, is a unique restaurant bar with original interior and atmosphere.  The first thing you will notice on entering the restaurant is the lightened liquor shelf.  Besides Japanese beers, there are original cocktails and Japanese sake to enhance the cuisine.  The Japanese sake, especially, are imported regularly from Japan by special cargo arrangement and various local sake are stocked to satisfy the customers.  Depending on the timing, there is a possibility that you might come across some very famous, visionary sake that are rather difficult to obtain even in Japan.  So, those of you who are sake-lovers, be sure to stop by and check.  As for original, creative cuisine, the inventive à la carte dishes are prepared, from traditional ones to something a bit different, using Japanese ingredients to the utmost. 

Address: 1304-1/2 S.Pacific Coast Highway, 
Redondo Beach, CA 90277 (Between Ave.E and F)

TEL : (310) 316-9477
FAX : (310) 316-9474

Service Hours ：
Dinner: 5:30PM -0:00AM(Mon.- Sat) 5:30PM - 10:00PM(Sun.)

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