Once Great; Today Nothing Special
Written: Aug 06 '02
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Pros: Sushi is probably still good
Cons: Gone down hill, lousy location
The Bottom Line: Twenty years ago this was the greatest sushi in LA. All good things must pass. Shibucho has fallen, and old fish is not pleasant.
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| BillyBrack's Full Review: Shibucho - Little Tokyo |
I was last at Shibucho about three years ago with two business colleagues who were new to sushi. We were at a table drinking beer waiting for the sushi bar to open up. The waiter came up to us and asked us if we would order. We said no we were waiting for the sushi bar. He told us the sushi bar was for “Japanese only”. We walked out without paying for our beers, and I haven’t been back since. There are plenty of other sushi-ya in Los Angeles. I can live without Shibucho.
I know this was not management policy, but the tone in the waiter’s voice made it clear this was no translation error. If the owner of Shibucho, Mr. Shibui, had found out, there would have been a difficult situation. The best thing to do was leave. I understand Mr. Shibui has retired, so there isn’t much point in returning to Shibucho. I understand it is still open under another management. Perhaps it is good.
The tragedy of all this is that I had been going to Shibucho for more than 20 years through various locations and many changes in the LA sushi scene. I hold Mr. Shibui in high esteem. He wasn’t the first sushi master in Los Angeles (that is another story), but in the early 80s there were very few. He was the first to raise the quality to world class level. He proved there was a market for the highest quality sushi in the US when this was far from obvious. He also trained many of the best sushi chefs in the US.
If there is a pile of salt by the front door of a LA sushi bar, chances are the owner worked at Shibucho at one time. The tradition of pouring salt by the door of the sushi-ya goes back to Japan. Farmers took their produce to market in ox carts, and the oxen would be attracted to the salt. With the ox busy licking salt, the farmer would have a bit of time to drink a little sake.
Mr. Shibui also insisted that his chefs use some specific knife techniques. This is very much like schools of martial arts. Techniques are very distinctive once you have been taught how to look for them. When I moved to Seattle in 1995, I was desperate for good sushi. I must have visited 30 sushi-ya before I found “Shiro” in Belltown. I knew I had found a first class sushi-ya when I noticed the knife technique of the assistant sushi chef and remarked that he must have been trained by Mr. Shibui. I was correct.
The original Shibucho was on Beverly Blvd. It is a tiny place today run by a single chef, but when Mr. Shibui ran it there were three chefs. Actually there were two chefs and Mr. Shibui. Mr. Shibui was dressed in black like a bunraku puppeteer. Bunraku is a Japanese form of puppet theater where the puppeteer is dressed in black and therefore “not there”. You are supposed to ignore him. In the mid 80s when he opened a larger sushi restaurant in Venice, Mr. Shibui dressed as a busboy. It was comical because all the Japanese business men would sit in the “bad seats” by the kitchen talking to the bus boy. Most of the Venice customers never caught on.
A sushi master can make sushi without appearing to be doing anything. Like a magician, it is all mis-direction. He never looks at his hands. He will look you straight in the face as he is talking, and suddenly the sushi will “just appear” in front of you.
Western restaurant reviewers of the era never understood Mr. Shibui’s sense of theater. The place was nearly pitch dark except for lights on the performers. The floor was cement with smooth rocks in it. The waitress wore a kimono that only allowed her foot to move a few inches. As she walked over the floor in her wooden sandals, it made the most wonderful sound.
If a customer were so gauche as to make a paste of their wasabi and soy sauce, Mr. Shibui would reach over, take it from them, and replace it with a dish with the proper amount of soy sauce. This sort of behavior sent some restaurant reviewers into apoplexy. I was once fumbling with some Dungeness crab in its shell. The black pajama clad hand reached over, and my crab disappeared. Mr. Shibui took his metal Ohashi (chopsticks) and in a few seconds produced a pile of crab meat and a pile of shell without his fingers ever touching the crab. Without saying anything he returned it to me.
About midnight they would put on the main floor show. Mr. Shibui would be directing things to make sure everybody had their glasses and their plates full. He would then bring out some sort of whole fish. Mr. Shibui had a phenomenal set of sushi knives under a glass case. One was the size of a samurai sword, and there were perhaps a half dozen sushi knives obviously made by the same master who made the sword. While he never used these knives, the knives he used were of similar quality.
To absolute silence Mr. Shibui and his assistants would discuss the fish -- the object being to get the most pleasing textures and mixes of light and dark with the least wastage. Mr. Shibui would then make the first cut with a two handed blade about 2.5 feet long, and then hand the fish off to his assistants to finish off, and people would resume their conversations. They could have cut up the fish in the kitchen like everybody else does, but I’d hate to have missed the experience. It was great theater.
One evening three loud men with thick New York accents walked in just as the show was about to start. That evening they were cutting up a yellowtail or Hamachi. One of the New Yorkers bellowed. “I’ll take the whole thing, but cut da brown s*h*i*t out.” One of the assistant chefs replied. “Very Expensive” while bowing a lot. To which the gentleman from New York replied “I don’t give a %$#. I got plenty of money.” At this point he produced a handful of hundred dollar bills which he waved in the air for everybody to see how rich he was. At this point everyone within three blocks suddenly lost the ability to speak English. They sent out the dishwasher who really didn’t speak English and persuaded him to hand the trio a bill for $300 for the one order of sushi they had already consumed. They complained bitterly about the price, but settled for $200 and left.
In those days Shibucho was open to 3:00 AM. I was programming computers in Marina del Rey and living in Malibu. About twice a month it seemed like a great idea to go for sushi at 2:00 AM. Since they couldn’t serve sake, and I can’t sleep if I drink tea, we’d settle for some Chevas in a tea cup. In addition to Japanese businessmen, the other clients at that hour appeared to be people from the fashion industry. These were people who actually cut cloth from patterns. What they were doing up at 2:00 AM was never explained to me. Perhaps they had to have the cut patterns at the sweat shops in East LA by sunrise.
Sometimes groups of businessmen would be accompanied by a paid female escort. These women were always over 40, which seemed very old to me at the time. They would entertain by flirting, telling jokes and even doing magic tricks. One evening the party didn’t show up and the escort was pretty upset. She sat down next me and started buying the men behind the bar sake. They redirected her attention in my direction, and she started buying me sake. I knew the object was to see how drunk she could get me, and I was firmly resolved to resist, but she won. I have a lot more understanding of alcoholics. I have always been able to stop drinking when I need to, but it was as though she knew where the switch was and exactly how to turn it. I have never been that drunk in my life. Amazingly she did this without speaking English. As more westerners started discovering sushi this sort of activity (as well as after hours drinking) moved to private “bottle clubs”.
Shibucho gained an international reputation. By 1985 a lot of European tourists started showing up. How they heard of the place is unknown, but even at this early date many were Internet users. Shibucho never became trendy. Reviewers considered Mr. Shibui to be imperious and Shibucho over priced. While others were installing loud sound systems, Shibucho was still playing classical Japanese music quietly. People in LA did start to learn the importance of good sushi. We were exporting tens of millions of dollars of sea urchin roe, and we fished abalone to near extinction. Sushi became a big industry, and I think Shibucho had a bigger role in all this than its size would suggest.
In the early 90s Shibucho moved to its current location in what is now known as Little Tokyo Square. The previous owner Yaohan appears to have gone down in the Japanese real estate market crash, and the name Yaohan has been replaced with Little Tokyo Square. The building looks pretty seedy today.
By the time I was 45 or so (1992) the idea of staying up until 3:00 AM had lost its appeal. I went to the “new Shibucho” for lunch more often than dinner. I do remember sitting around the new Shibucho in 1993 or so and talking with some Japanese bankers about the coming Japanese market crash. They were very depressed and warned me that it was going to get worse. They were right.
Perhaps the new Shibucho will do well as the economy rebounds, but it is too late. Back when Shibucho was at its peak in the mid 1980s, there was a young chef named Nobu Matsuhisa at a place called Osho in Santa Monica. He went on to found Matsuhisa and a world wide empire based on what is now called “new style Japanese cooking”. Nobu certainly deserves his fame and fortune, but his early success was based on the fact that great sushi-quality seafood was available in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Shibucho had a lot to do with that.
Epinions Reviewers: I know this isn’t the sort of review I’m supposed to do, but I felt this story needed telling, and this is as good a place as any. I had fun writing it. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Recommended:
No
Kid Friendliness: No
Best Suited For: Business
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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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