I’m back in Southern California for a little bit again in preparation for joining my friend Doug Wreden during his annual Monterey Bay Aquarium charity fundraising event, which is coming up this weekend.
While in town, I met up with my friend Kelsey Bunner, who I don’t get to see often because she travels a lot for work, but I managed to catch her this week to go on a food adventure together. She likes sushi but doesn’t go to omakase experiences too often, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to check out Sushi Sasabune in Glendale of Los Angeles County, California.
For our appetizer, we got a plate of three items: baby tuna with radish…
… salmon with mango…
… and abalone.
Our second opening dish was scallop.
Next was our first batch of nigiri. We got red snapper…
… mackerel…
… and tuna.
Only one piece of tuna is pictured here, but we got two—one akami and one chutoro. The chef told us that both cuts were from the same fish. I couldn’t tell whether he intended to say that they were both from the same type of fish, i.e., tuna, but it would be interesting if he actually meant that it was from the same physical fish.
As an intermission, we got another specialty plate, this one containing oyster, baked mussel, baked crab, and radish.
I have never seen any restaurant prepare a whole baked baby crab like this, and I thought this was very clever and creative. Kelsey couldn’t bring herself to eat her baked crab because it looked too cute, so I solved that by amputating all its limbs and flipping it upside-down so that it would look more like food and less like an animal.
Next were two more pieces of nigiri: sea perch…
… and sweet shrimp topped with caviar.
Next were three pieces of gunkan: sea urchin…
… salmon roe…
… and black cod.
We were nearing the end of our meal and had two more pieces of nigiri left: eel…
… and skipjack.
As the grand finale, and the last dish of the night, we each got a blue crab hand roll.
We opted not to order dessert à la carte, so the chef treated us with some Japanese grapes instead.
Omakase was $150.00 per person, and along with iced green tea for $3.50, $31.11 in tax, and $50.00 as gratuity, our total came to US$384.61.
Overall, I enjoyed my experience at Sasabune Glendale. All the fish was high in quality, and the way they prepared the specialty dishes was very unique and creative.
With that being said, the portion size of the meal was disappointingly small for the cost (and this is the only reason why I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend Sasabune Glendale). For an easy comparison, one of my favorite restaurants of all time, Masamitsu, also cost $150 per person, but I am pretty sure the amount of food I got at Masamitsu was literally about double of what I got at Sasabune—not only due to there being way more dishes, but also because the cuts of fish on the nigiri were much larger and thicker.
There seem to be multiple Sasabunes across the Los Angeles area. Some of the reviews of the one in Beverly Hills, which has omakase at the same pricepoint, say that the meal there was very filling. I’ve added that onto my list of restaurants to eventually try—I’m hoping that the Beverly Hills location maintains the same spirit of creative and distinct dishes, while having larger portion sizes.