Recently I went to Hide Sushi, which is one of the best quality, reasonable priced sushi restaurants in Southern California. It is located in Los Angeles: map
They don’t take reservations, but it is definitely worth the wait or worth going early. We sat in the sushi bar and enjoyed some ebi (shrimp), ika with shiso (cuttlefish with perilla), salmon skin roll, scallop with ponzu sauce, aji (Japanese mackerel), and lastly the amaebi (sweet shrimp). Also here are some tips that I learned from this experience:
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Greet the sushi chefs when sitting at the bar.
They are very entertaining and can help to enhance the sushi experience. When talking to the chefs, I found their long standing joke to be people who greet by ordering sushi. The sushi chefs say irashaimase (welcome) and sometimes customers answer by saying “tuna, salmon, and california roll.”
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No chopsticks please!
Traditional way to eat sushi is not with chopsticks, but with your hands. You can use the oshibori (hand towel) to clean your hands.
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Prepare the sauce.
Mix wasabi (Japanese horseradish) with shoyu (soysauce) to dip your sushi.
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Know your dipping style.
For nigiri types of sushi (that is those with fish on top of rice), dip the fish side into the soysauce, not the rice. For gunkan maki (oval shaped with seaweed surrounding the around rice and finely chopped ingredients), dip ginger in soysauce then transfer the ginger’s soysauce to the gunkan maki.
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Meaning of eating ginger
In between each type of sushi, eating ginger to clear your palette.
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Hierarchy of sushi chefs
You can tell, which sushi chef has the most experience from where they are standing. The head chef or the most experience stands where they are most visible to customers.
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Enjoy the art of sushi making
Sushi eating fulfills all of your senses. In addition to the savory taste, watching the sushi chefs is fascinating. It is like an art how they flip the sushi rice around and place the fish on top. The best sushi chefs make the rice soft, yet it does not crumble in your hands.
