This coming weekend, I’m headed to San Diego, California for TwitchCon. For that trip, I decided to start in Los Angeles County and make the ~120 mile (~195 kilometer) drive down south, making a few stops along the way. So, in preparation, I headed over from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. While in town in LA and before I left, I decided to stop by 江戸前鮨 㐂扇, which translates to Sushi Kisen, a Japanese restaurant in Arcadia, California.

I originally heard about this restaurant back in early 2025 during the highly destructive Eaton Fire due to this message they posted online during a power outage: “We cooked come proteins that we can’t store in our fridges. Any firefighters, police officers, [or] electricians who’ve been working hard fighting for our community … please come help us clean [out] our fridge.” I used to work in law enforcement and still have quite a few first-responder friends. I now work in a field that is far less stressful and has far greater earning potential, so one of the ways I like to help my former fellow comrades is to support business that support them.

After being on my “want to go” list for several months, I finally found a good opportunity to check them out for a lunch omakase experience costing US$90.00 per person.

The meal started with some sea snail.

My friend got some hot green tea with the restaurant name 鮨 㐂扇 printed on the side of the cup. She said it was great tea, and she was happy that the waitress promptly and regularly came around to give her refills. This was only US$3.00 and she thought it was great value.

The lunch omakase consisted primarily of nigiri. Pictured below were our first six pieces.

Part-way through our meal, we noticed that they were cutting up some tuna; one of the chefs was happy to show it to us and let me take a photograph.

Afterwards, nigiri service continued with four more pieces.

My favorite type of sushi is sea urchin, so I was happy to see that uni gunkan was part of the omakase.

As we were nearing the end of our omakase, we were given a negitoro hand roll.

I forgot to bring my Sony ZV-1 camera for this meal, so I took all my photographs with my phone. On my point-and-shoot camera, there is a single “action” button where you can prompt it to auto-focus by depressing it part-way, then command it to capture the shot by lowering the button all the way down. My phone, on the other hand, has a virtual capture button that immediately saves the picture, and if you want to get it to focus, you have to tap the screen atop the item on which you want it to focus. Obviously, my left hand was busy holding my hand roll and my right hand was busy holding my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is a pretty hefty device, so I used my nose to tap the screen and make it focus on the tuna. My friend found that quite amusing and said it was the “life of a content creator.”

After we finished the hand roll, we each got a bowl of miso soup containing some whitefish.

To conclude our meal, we got a nice, thick cut of tamago served nori-ribbon nigiri style.

As expected from a Japanese omakase experience, we were served at the sushi bar and were able to watch the chef prepare each item throughout our meal. This was the view from the perspective of my seat.

I snapped this photograph of the rest of the restaurant (including the regular table dining area) on our way out. We had the final reservation slot available prior to them closing for lunch, so the restaurant was empty by the time we had finished our meal, and most of the staff had already began their mid-day breaks.

Along with our check, we were given a survey so that we could share feedback about our experience, which my friend filled out. In the photo, you can see the chef eagerly peeking over the sushi bar to see what she wrote, which I thought was pretty funny.

This is what the exterior of the restaurant looked like; it was just a small and somewhat inconspicuous restaurant nestled in the re-entrant corner of this strip mall.

I originally wanted to try out their dinner omakase, but the timing didn’t work out this time around due to my friend’s tight schedule and my infrequent presence in the Los Angeles area. Being in Arcadia, this restaurant is further away from the more congested and unpleasant areas of Los Angeles, so I am definitely willing to go back in the future to try their dinner set as well.

With that being said, I was still satisfied with the lunch omakase. It was relatively light, but still reasonable for what you’d expect for lunch. There wasn’t anything particularly special or innovative about the omakase, which is not necessarily a bad thing—it serves as a good option for someone who is looking for a simple, predictable, traditional experience during a quick lunch break.