Visit Japan in Gardena
Written: Sep 10 '02
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Pros: Great Sushi Traditional Japanese Atmosphere
Cons: May be "too Japanese" for some people used to American Style Sushi
The Bottom Line: If you are looking for great sushi in a traditional Japanese environment, Or, if you are homesick for Japan, this is the place for you.
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| BillyBrack's Full Review: Kampachi |
Kanpachi is my regular sushi bar. I have been going there since the early 80s even though it is a thirty mile drive in each direction.
In the “old days” (early 1980s) Kanpachi was located on Western Blvd. near the card clubs in Gardena, and was open until 3:00 AM. In those days I would go into the place and the bar would be covered with “reserved” signs. I would sit at a table even though the bar was empty. This bothered me, but the sushi was so good I kept coming back. Fortunately a Japanese friend who was at that time the Kirin beer distributor introduced me, and I was allowed to sit by the kitchen with the junior sushi chef.
The junior chef was Victor, son of the owners. He is a French trained chef in his own right, and at that time was working for United Air Lines catering during the day (when they cooked their own food!) and as a sushi chef at night. Victor explained that the reserved sign was not an attempt to keep westerners out, but it was important to reserve space for groups of regular corporate customers. Victor pointed out that nobody was using credit cards. When customers had finished a meal, Victor’s mother would bring the customer a blank piece of paper and something would get scribbled on it. On Thursday Victor’s father would visit the client and get paid. This is how it was done in Japan, and the tradition had been carried to the US.
A guide to Japanese Restaurants in LA written in the mid 80s described Kampachi as “a place where you can forget that you are in the United States”. I know the feeling. I lived in Europe for a year, and occasionally I’d seek out a place where everybody spoke English. I took a Japanese business colleague to Kampachi once. He had been under terrible stress as he had been away from his family for a long period of time and had given up a “job for life” in a big company to work on a risky venture. He loved Kampachi “It was just like being in Japan” he told me. He also talked about how his father had been a bitter veteran of WW II and died hating everything about America. He said “I wish he were here today and could see me now. I think he’d approve.”
In the early 90s Kampachi moved to their current location on Artesia Blvd. The new place included a very expensive ventilation system. It was the custom in those days to put a rack of Japanese brand cigarettes within easy reach of the customers. The customers at the new location were the same chain-smoking bad-suit wearing Japanese salarymen. Artesia Blvd and the 91 freeway are known locally in the Japanese community as the Ginza strip because nearly every major Japanese corporation has an office or warehouse here. This area is equidistant to the port of Los Angeles and LA airport. If you own any consumer goods made in Japan, it rode in a truck on the 91 freeway before it got to you.
When I moved to Seattle in 1995, Kampachi was doing fine. California hadn’t yet banned smoking in restaurants, and everyone was ignoring signs that the Japanese economy was about to collapse. I kept my motorcycle at a friend’s house near LAX, and when I’d visit LA I’d head straight for Kampachi to get my sushi fix.
Just about the time the state of California banned smoking in restaurants, the Japanese economy imploded. Expense account sushi in the LA office was the first economy measure of the giant Japanese corporations. I’d fly in from Seattle and arrive at an empty Kampachi.
I was once in Tokyo during a typhoon. Narita airport was closed, and there were no cars on the streets, but the police never left their posts. I remember standing in front of my hotel looking at the policemen in their yellow rainsuits getting poured on with no traffic to direct. Just standing there. Through the difficult period in the late 90s, Kampachi maintained the highest quality standards, and nobody was laid off or quit. I thought of those cops in Tokyo as the Kampachi staff would stand in front of an empty sushi bar with nothing to do.
Kampachi passed through a few tough years, but it is alive and well today. The quality of the sushi is as good or better than at the peak of the Japanese economy. The corporate customers are back, but they don’t come once a week as in the past. Sushi is now a special occasion, and the group usually includes a customer rather than just the boys from the office on their weekly outing. Smokers must now go outside.
Kampachi does a good lunch business selling churashi sushi. This is a lacquer box stuffed with rice and fish laid on top. It is a great lunch value from $9 to $15 for a lot of sushi. The menu has pictures, and most of the crowd doesn’t speak Japanese.
In the evening the customers are mostly Japanese men and their wives. In the corporate expense account days, there were no women. I guess people are making up for lost time with their families. The people who come to Kampachi today know good sushi and appreciate a place that keeps up traditions. Of course nearly everybody speaks fluent English, but they prefer to speak Japanese. Last week, I was particularly pleased to see middle aged man taking his elderly mother out for dinner, and another couple treating their grand daughter to sushi. She was happily speaking Japanese which I doubt she does with her parents.
When you sit down, the first thing you will notice is that everything is served on a Ti leaf rather than a porcelain plate. There will be pickled ginger (gari) and wasabi. Wasabi is a naturally green “horseradish”. It can be terribly hot. Most places use dried wasabi powder that is reconstituted with water. Not at Kampachi; the wasabi is freshly imported from Japan and ground that evening. This stuff is expensive as it only grows in a few areas. I know of no other place in the US that serves fresh imported wasabi.
They will ask you if you want sushi or sashimi. I start with sashimi and move to sushi later. They probably will be serving some sort of cooked fish or cold salad in a small bowl or plate. This is different every evening. You may get something you have never tasted made from a fish you have never heard of.
Here is where the situation may get difficult. Kampachi has those horrid little plastic signs produced by the Japanese beer companies that have pictures of sushi. Don’t let that be your guide, as the choices at Kampachi are much more interesting than anything pictured on these menus. I have never ordered. I just sit down and stuff arrives, but I have been going there for 20 years, and they know what I like and how much I’m willing to spend. You can try saying “chef’s choice” or "omikasa", but I don’t know if that is going to work. Welcome to LA. This is where East meets West, and it isn’t always smooth. Misunderstandings can happen easily. Kampachi knows how to deal with people who are both expert in sushi and people who know nothing (picture menus and combination plates for a fixed price). I’m not sure they know how to handle the adventuresome customer who wants to learn more. It can be intimidating if everybody around you is speaking Japanese and doesn’t seem to be ordering. Politeness and patience will reward you with a great sushi experience if you make a small effort and have some sensitivity to what is going on around you.
The greatest area of cultural confusion revolves around how sushi is accounted for. Traditionally it was considered impolite to ask how much things cost. In Tokyo cheap sushi bars serve sushi on small plates, and the woman who collects the plates totals up the bills by counting the plates. As I mentioned above, traditional establishments hand their regular customers a blank piece of paper which is signed and then redeemed after a personal visit from the owner of the shop to the customer’s business.
If you are a non Japanese speaking stranger, you will be given a sheet of paper that has prices for individual pieces of sushi. If you look around, you will notice that none of the Japanese speaking people have been given these sheets. This is like being given a fork in a Chinese restaurant. They are trying to make you comfortable.
Matsuhisa is a highly respected sushi restaurant in Beverly Hills. In the early days they didn’t itemize bills. A friend of mine is a Go master, but has no money. He would go to Matsuhisa every Wednesday night and have sushi for ten dollars as that was all he could afford. (He doesn’t drink, and he eats modestly.) Nobu felt he was doing the community and his customers a service by supporting someone he felt was a great cultural resource who had done a lot to help respect for Japanese culture in LA, but customers complained loudly, and Matsuhisa was forced to move to a strict accounting of every dish for every customer.
If you want to use the sheet, go ahead. You have an itemized bill. If you don’t, your bill will not be itemized. You will get one number for sushi and another for the drinks and a total. The benefit to doing it the Japanese way is that chef is freer to innovate. If you want to do it Japanese style, just move the paper away from you, and it will disappear the next time the waitress clears a dish.
The chefs keep notes as to how much people are spending, but they take great pains to hide even the fact that they are taking notes. By the way, handing the chef money over the sushi bar is a big no-no. In Japan there is no tipping. In USA it is done discreetly with the bill. They will take the money in order to make you feel comfortable, but you are making them uncomfortable.
The name Kampachi refers to both a famous sushi bar in Tokyo and a fish native to Japan that fishermen call amberjack in English. Most sushi chefs call it yellowtail in English because it has an amber stripe down its middle and an amber tail, but it is very different from California yellowtail. The farmed Japanese “yellowtail” known as Hamachi is another species of fish entirely. Confused? Kampachi is a popular sushi fish in the Tokyo area, but it has only become popular in the last ten years. Most sushi men have never heard of it. Kampachi is the only sushi bar I have ever visited that has this fish, and they don’t have it very often. If they have it, try it.
Kampachi is the only place I know that has toro every day. Kampachi purchases a fish every year at the market in Tokyo and keeps it frozen for when toro is not available. Try the negi toro temaki. This is chopped toro served in an “ice cream cone” made from nori (pressed sea weed). Toro is the fatty part of the tuna belly. If you like it, you may become addicted to an expensive habit. By the way, if you want to order toro sushi or sashimi, refer to it as O-toro not toro. This is the honorific form, and it is only used for toro. Kampachi goes to a great deal of trouble and expense to get toro. Referring to it as O-toro is just a form of politeness.
Every sushi bar has anago (sea eel) but they purchase it sealed in plastic packages. The fish has been processed at the farm in Japan or more likely China today. Kampachi is one of the few places that serve fresh eel. Preparation of fresh eel is very difficult as the flesh is fragile. If it is in, order it. This is something incredibly delicate and mild enough that even non-fish eaters will love it. Look for it on top of the glass refrigerator case as it is best served at room temperature.
If you happen to be at Kampachi in August or September, you may get the local bluefin tuna or hon-maguro. This isn’t a fish that commands a high price on the international market as California bluefin are smaller and have less fat than tuna from other places in the world, but it is a tradition in the Los Angeles Japanese community that dates from pre WWII when many Americans of Japanese ancestry were fishermen. When the bluefin are running, everybody has an uncle or cousin who is a source of this fish. If the local bluefin is “in”, you can be sure it was swimming in the Pacific Ocean within the last day or so.
Another unusual sushi you might see is battera. This is a loaf of rice and pickled (rice vinegar) mackerel that has been pressed into a brick mold. A layer of transparent kelp (kombu shiro) is applied. This is the one form of sushi that gets better after sitting for a few hours. Men will stop at Kampachi to have a beer and a couple of orders of sushi, chat in Japanese with friends, and head home to their wife (or mistress?) with battera. You might want to order some “to go”.
Kampachi is one of the few places that make their own pickles. Japanese pickle anything and everything, and it is usually done on a small scale. In Japan you will see pickle shops where pickles are made on premises. In the USA Japanese markets have lots of strange looking pickles sealed in plastic vacuum containers. Home made is better. Many sushi traditionalists think pickles have no place at the sushi bar. I think they are wrong.
Don’t get me wrong about the more traditional sushi fish. Tuna, yellowtail, rock cod, sea urchin, sweet shrimp; they are all first-class and fresh. Just because you can get these fish at every other sushi bar doesn’t mean you should pass them up at Kampachi. Order your favorites and compare them to your regular sushi bar. You may become a regular at Kampachi.
Fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have recommended Kampachi to anyone who didn’t speak Japanese. It was almost a closed men’s club for Japanese speaking businessmen. Today if you go to Kampachi at lunch, most people will be speaking English. If you go in the evening, most people will be speaking Japanese. If you want to get along you will have to leave some Americanisms at the door. Things move at a slower pace, silence is not uncomfortable, people talk at a quieter level, and people say please and thank you a lot. You don’t have to speak Japanese. It is not that hard to fit in if you make half an effort.
Don’t go with more than three people. This lessens your chance of finding seats at the sushi bar, and the biggest table sits four.
Recommended:
Yes
Vegetarian Friendly: No
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations Toro, Kampachi, Anago and whatever is special of the evening
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Epinions.com ID:
BillyBrack
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Member: Billy Brackenridge
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 2 members
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