Anti Blog

LA Weekly

We Angelenos have our own local heroes. One has only to consider the enduring affection we feel for Rodney Bingenheimer, Angelyne and Dennis Woodruff to know this is true. Every city has their own…case in point: everyone in the world knows that John Waters is a cool dude, but Baltimore fucking LOVES him.

We are like that with food critic Johnathan Gold. He is renowned the world over, but I doubt his advice is so slavishly followed anywhere else but here. His reach is such that people have eaten at Oki Dog based solely on JG’s inclusion of it in his book (and a seeming fast and loose approach to personal health).

I am as guilty as the rest. I bought Counter Intelligence years ago with the goal of eating my way from Lawndale to San Gabriel, stopping at every taco truck along the way. I ate at that Uzbekistan restaurant on Sunset. I’ve driven past Oki Dog and thought “maybe a pastrami burrito isn’t that bad. Enough people like it that they keep serving it, right?” So, based on his recent review of Thousand Cranes restaurant in the LA Weekly, Brett and I ate there last night.

Though we go to Japan every few years and have eaten some very traditional Japanese meals, I had never experienced a meal at traditional tempura restaurant before. I had no idea what to expect, and the lack of a menu didn’t help. Turns out, it is like the tempura version of Nozawa: you eat what the chef has bought that day, in the order he determines and you stop when he has run out of things to give you. We settled back for an adventure.

I was surprised that we started off with sashimi. I don’t know if that is how tempura meals usually begin, but there was so much of it, it almost derailed the rest of the meal. Glad I only ate a bit. The tempura started coming in regular intervals after that, starting with delicious shrimp, and then veering into some strange territory. Oysters were startlingly liquidy considering they were battered and fried for some minutes. Five whole little fish wrapped in a shiso leaf were good in a weird way…a flavor totally singular and unmatched in other cuisines. The mountain yam with shark fin was just plain whoa, the cartilage crunch mixed with the slime of the root made for one of those table gripping moments.

Still, it was an enjoyable, eye-opening experience. Who knew you could put something that looked just like sushi in boiling oil and fry it? And how interesting, to mix green tea and sea salt. While I wouldn’t say it was fantastic in the sense that everything was delicious in an unexpected way, it was truly fantastic because it was fairly far out. If you want to read an educated review of Thousand Cranes, read JG’s…this is merely the sharing of our culinary adventuring.

PS – I totally stole the LA Weekly photos because I was concentrating so much on what i was eating, I forgot to take pix…