Hello, Masamitsu Japanese Cuisine in San Marino, California

I go to nice restaurants on a very regular basis, but it’s been a little while since I’ve been to an ultra high-end place. Last Wednesday night, I joined one of my foodie friends for an omakase experience at Masamitsu Japanese Cuisine in San Marino of Los Angeles County, California.

For our appetizer, we got four small dishes. The first was shrimp and mushrooms in house-made sauce. The sauce had a perfect level of tang to it, and the shrimp was literally the most tender shrimp I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.

The second was monkfish liver. This is the second time I’ve ever had monkfish liver; the previous time I tried it, it sort of tasted like crab miso, but this time, it had a more unique and individual taste. The third was some noodles with jelly-like consistency. I wasn’t really able to precisely pinpoint exactly what it was. The noodles themselves had a mild flavor, but the sauce was a tiny bit too sour for my preference. My favorite facet of the dish was actually the texture—it was very slippery and slimy, but not in an unpleasant way.

Finally, the fourth was an oyster. I squeezed a tiny bit of fresh lemon juice onto it. This was probably one of the best oysters I’ve ever had—it had just enough flavor that it was right up to the threshold of strength and intensity of oysteriness without being too strong. The texture was extremely smooth and it had a very clean and pure aftertaste.

The second course was a plate of sashimi. Each cut of sashimi was aggressively thick, which made it extremely satisfying to eat. Even the slice of chutoro was very large, which is rare to see when it comes to high-end fish like tuna belly.

The sashimi came with various edible flowers on the side. I usually try to avoid edible flowers because they just taste too much like I spritzed perfume in­to my mouth, but these were a lot more subtle in flavor. The chef also gave us some advice on which ones to have in what manner (e.g., certain ones that work better with or without soy sauce), which also helped maximize the flavor profile of the whole course.

The third course was chawanmushi with truffle, caviar, and mushroom. The deep richness of the egg custard went well after having just finished large por­tions of raw fish.

Next up was the assortment of nigiri.

There was one piece that stood out to me. I actually don’t remember which fish it was, but it was very well prepared. Half of it was seared so, when I put the whole piece of nigiri in my mouth, it tasted as if I was eating two different pieces at once. The amount of sear was perfect—it added the nice flavor of charred and burnt fish, but it was not bitter at all.

One other recurring theme for some of the pieces of nigiri that I really liked was the way the fish was scored. This increased the surface area of the fish so that, when I put the piece in my mouth, it made more thorough contact with my tongue and allowed me to taste the fish more deeply. This doesn’t mat­ter as much in other situations, but when the quality of the fish is as high as what Masamitsu uses, it does make a noticeable difference.

We took a brief intermission from nigiri for some black cod. The skin was nearly as tender as the fish itself, and with the thinly-sliced and lightly-pickled cucumber on the side, it tasted amazing.

I always take and use my own photographs for my website, but my friend wanted to contribute this time around. She took six out of the 21 photos in this blog post. Can you figure out which ones they are?

The next round of nigiri came after the cod. We got sweet shrimp, tuna belly, and salmon roe.

If you know me well, you know that my favorite sushi is uni. The chef opened a new box of sea urchin for us and let me take a photo of it. He then pre­pared uni gunkan for us with a very generous portion of uni.

As our dinner approached an end, we received some miso soup with mushrooms and fish as a closer. This is probably the one and only thing we were served that I wasn’t a huge fan of, as the miso was a bit too strong. I ended up not finishing the soup, but I did eat all the mushrooms and fish inside.

The final piece of nigiri was skinless eel. I was very full by this point, but the relatively mildness of the eel went along nicely with the strong miso soup.

For dessert, we got one scoop of ice cream each. Mine was black sesame, which sort of tasted like a mixture of coffee and vanilla bean.

My friend got green tea and decided to add some extra character to her scoop.

The total for the meal pre-tax and pre-gratuity was US$306.00—omakase was $150 per person, and we added on a yuzu soda for $6. Compared to other omakase restaurants I’ve been to, this was a great price considering how good the food was. The service was also fantastic—the servers were attentive and respectful, and our chef was interactive to a degree that you like to see during an omakase experience.

If you’re ever in the Los Angeles or Pasadena area and looking for a great meal around this pricepoint, I highly recommend Masamitsu Japanese Cuisine. This was a real omakase experience in the sense that it was a truly chef-catered experience, as opposed to some restaurants that have been popping up now­a­days that just piece together a few existing items on their menu and claim that it’s omakase.

When people ask me what my all-time favorite restaurant is, my go-to answer has been Utzutzu. After this dinner, I now have Masamitsu to add to the list.

 

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Hello, Mr. Shota All-You-Can-Eat Sushi in Spring Valley, Las Vegas, Nevada

For my latest restaurant adventure, I went to Mr. Shota AYCE Sushi in the unincorporated town of Spring Valley in the Las Vegas Valley.

To start, I got salmon and yellowtail carpaccio with ponzu and truffle oil.

Next was the seafood salad.

For my third dish, I received a sashimi roll with tuna, salmon, whitefish, and crab wrapped with cucumber and topped with screaming orgasm sauce. At other restaurants, this roll is often called the Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Following that was seafood aioli with assorted fresh fish topped with fried onion and drenched in creamy aioli and eel sauce.

Then came towering sashimi poke with assorted fish and crab on wonton chips with ponzu, spicy mayo, and eel sauce.

Next was an oyster.

After that was amaebi, or sweet shrimp.

My final plate consisted of salmon belly, ocean trout, salmon, and sea urchin.

For dessert, I got ube ice cream… but more on that later.

If you look through my photos, you’ll notice that this is substantially less food than I usually have at all-you-can-eat restaurants. It’s not because I wasn’t hungry… it is because Mr. Shota had the literal worst service I have ever received at an all-you-can-eat restaurant in my entire life.

I spent about two and a half hours at the restaurant and the waiter came to my table six times. The first time was to give me water and take my first or­der. The second time was to bring me my first round of food. Then nobody showed up for about an hour, before I managed to flag someone down to put in my second round of food. My second round took over half an hour to show up, during the waiter’s fourth visit. The fifth visit wasn’t even a real visit, but I flagged someone down again to get myself some dessert. The sixth visit was to drop off a small container of ice cream. I went straight up to the register to pay, then left.

Decent waiters at AYCE restaurants will check on you once every ten to fifteen minutes to make sure you have all the food you want, or at the very least, show up once they notice you’ve finished eating everything on your table. I understand that some AYCE restaurants have policies in place to in­ten­tion­al­ly place delay in food ordering and delivery, thus trying to make you feel more full and en­couraging you to eat less food to cut costs… but Mr. Shota has done this to an unacceptable extreme.

The reason the table in the background of the ice cream photograph is different is because I took it back with me and ate it at home, because I was way too frustrated with the restaurant and didn’t want to stay any longer.

Never go to Mr. Shota.

 

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Hello, Gaetano’s Ristorante in Henderson, Nevada

I’m back home in Las Vegas for a bit before my next trip, and for my first nice meal back, I met up with my friend Aidan who owns the Skip the Tutorial channel on YouTube for another food adventure.

This time, we decided on Gaetano’s Ristorante, an Italian restaurant in the Siena Promenade in Hen­der­son, Nevada.

When we arrived, we were served a basket of complementary bread. This was actually one of the nicer bread baskets I’ve had; there were three different kinds of bread, and they were more “premium” pieces than just the plain white bread that you get at a lot of other restaurants.

Like usual, so I can try as many different dishes as possible, I did a “build your own” dinner where I ordered multiple appetizers instead of just a single main entrée. My first appetizer was tenderloin carpaccio with raw filet mignon, arugula, shaved parmesan cheese, and Sicilian olive oil.

I thought this was fine. There was way too much cheese, and I think I would’ve liked it more if it had about a quarter of the cheese that it came with, but I think that particular aspect of the dish is highly subjective, considering that I’m not really that big of a fan of cheese in general. I ended up only using a quarter of the cheese along with the carpaccio, then finished the remainder of the cheese afterwards as a topping for the bread.

Unfortunately, the filet mignon slices were more like shavings instead of slices, as they were a bit excessively thin. It would’ve been nice if the portion size was a bit larger, but when the slices were separated and swirled around, there was still enough substance in them to have a satisfying bite.

Aidan’s appetizer was three stuffed mozzarella sticks with pistachio pesto and marinara. As you may have deduced from what I just said about cheese, I wasn’t particularly interested in them, so I didn’t sample any.

Aidan also got a house salad with mixed greens, carrots, shaved parmesan cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette.

My second dish was grilled Calabrese mild sausage with rapini, olive oil, and garlic. I’m usually more of a fish and seafood person, but surprisingly, this sausage was my favorite plate of the meal. The sausage wasn’t too salty, it had a deep and rich flavor, and the greens complemented it well. At this point, we had also requested a second bowl of bread, and the bread enhanced the flavor of the sausage and rapini very nicely.

My third and final dish was brodetto, made from fresh black mussels sautéed with a lightly-spiced marinara sauce served with crostinis.

I probably should’ve Googled “brodetto” prior to ordering it so I could see that it was basically Italian fish stew. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it wasn’t too bad either. I like the isolated oceanic flavor of raw seafood, so it was a bit different to have the cooked mussels along with tomato sauce. The crostinis were a bit too crispy to the extent that it was a little painful to chew, so I ended up soaking them in the marinara to soften them up first.

Aidan ordered truffle mac and cheese for his main entrée.

For dessert, we split a spumoni, made with layered gelato and whipped cream with a cherry in the middle. The flavors we got were vanilla, chocolate, and pistachio. To me, it just tasted like regular ice cream, which was refreshing after having such a thick and meaty meal.

This is what the inside of the restaurant looked like.

Bread $  0.00
Tenderloin carpaccio $ 22.00
Mozzarella sticks $ 12.00
House salad $ 14.00
Sausage and rapini $ 18.00
Brodetto $ 22.00
Truffle mac and cheese $ 32.00
Spumoni $ 12.00
Diet Coke ×2 $ 10.00
Sales tax $ 11.90
Gratuity $ 23.00
Total $176.90

The table on the right shows how much we paid.

One thing I found comical about this restaurant is that it aims to be an upper- to high-end restaurant, but it’s located in a major shopping center area. In order to give off the impression of being premium, they have a valet parking option (which I obviously did not use). Hilariously, the “valet parking” was nothing special—the valet spot was marked off with cones, there was one single valet spot, and it was literally about 20 steps away from the front door. To compound the humor, there is a Buffalo Wild Wings a few doors down, and it was absolutely packed with people who had shown up for Super Bowl LVIII who were just desperately park­ing their cars anywhere there was space. I already despise the concept of valet parking anyway, but this en­tire situation just made the stupidity of the concept even funnier.

Also unrelated to the food, but still something I want to mention: their service seems to be a little scat­ter­brained. Throughout my dining experience, I think there were either four or five different people who served us, so it was difficult to tell who exactly our waiter was—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but definitely different. When the first waiter showed up to take our appetizer order, he listed off so many off-the-menu specials (I’m talking probably like 6+ options) that it would’ve probably been worth it for them to create a special mini-menu for the daily features. He also did not have a notepad, so when we ordered, he tried to memorize everything, then came back to us twice because was second-guessing himself on what we ordered and wanted to re-verify with us.

A recurring theme I’ve noticed from most Italian restaurants is that they serve their food extremely salty, but Gaetano’s seemed to be an exception to that, which I appreciated. The food definitely was still a bit salty, but it was nowhere near the level of other Italian restaurants where it felt like the inside of my mouth was basically getting pickled.

Overall, I’m happy with what I got, but I think there might be some better options that you may want to check out at this price point where you’d get better value for your money.

 

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Photo dump from January 2024

For the past month and a half, I went through a phase of chasing nostalgia. I live streamed a lot on Twitch during my holiday break between Christ­mas and New Year’s Day, just like how I used to stream a lot during my winter breaks from undergraduate university over a decade ago. I also wanted to try daily blogging again, just like how I used to daily blog in 2011.

Needless to say, I failed. I made it January 1-9 of daily blogging before I realized it was unsustainable. My minimum acceptable quality bar of a blog post has increased substantially up to the point where it usually takes me an average of an hour or more to finish writing one… if I even have anything to write about to begin with. Over ten years go, this wasn’t the case—on some days, I would just publish a single random photograph and call it a day.

Earlier in the month, I was collecting sets of pictures that I thought I would turn into individual blog posts, but didn’t because the size of each set wasn’t satisfactory. I don’t have much from the final cou­ple weeks of January because I let myself indulge in something personal I wanted to do that took up basically the entirety of all my free time and even some sleep time, but I think I still have enough to warrant a small photo dump from this month.

 
Here’s a small set of photos from a quick all-you-can-eat lunch from Tomomi Sushi in Alhambra, California. To open, I got tuna, salmon, yellowtail, al­ba­core, and tilapia sashimi.

Next was a plate of baked green mussels.

My third dish was tako wasabi, which is raw octopus.

For my assortment of nigiri, I got salmon, yellowtail, Spanish mackerel, albacore, escolar, and squid.

My final dish was ika sansai, which is squid salad.

 
As many people already know by now, I used to live on the Las Vegas Strip in a residential high-rise condominium building. It obviously has its perks, like having great amenities and security, and being central to the Las Vegas Valley so I can pretty much get anywhere within 20 minutes, but another ma­jor thing I liked was the view.

One of my biggest regrets from the past year is moving out into the suburbs under the false assumption that I would appreciate the more peaceful life­style after having road tripped for two years non-stop while living out of hotel rooms. The first month was pleasant, but after that, it got boring—it was too quiet out near Summerlin South, and more than anything, I missed waking up to a stunning view and bright sunlight.

While in Los Angeles County in January, I visited a friend who has a nice view from her home, even though she doesn’t live in a high-rise. It’s definitely not the same as a high-rise view, but it reminded me of when our Tempo team house was up near the Hollywood Hills, and it gave me a little bit of nostalgia from my time living on the Strip.

 
I have historically not been much of a board game person, but I was persuaded to join my friends Doug and Billie-Rae for board game nights once in a while.

Our very first attempt was Pan Am, which is apparently built around Pan American Airways, a now-defunct airline. We spent almost two hours un­pack­aging the game and learning how to play, actually played the game for around 20 minutes, and then proceeded to get distracted and quit before ever fin­ish­ing a single round because it was almost 3 AM and I wanted to go to sleep.

Next was Monopoly. This went a lot better than Pan Am, though I accidentally made a catastrophically critical error which allowed Billie-Rae to snowball out of control and make it absolutely hopeless for anyone else to have a chance at winning. Luckily, in exchange for my inadvertent generosity towards her cause, Billie-Rae gave me a few breaks when I landed on her spots, which at least let me beat Doug and not get last place.

I also landed on the Free Parking space. I am going to save this photograph as evidence and use it the next time I go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (which is what this version of Monopoly was themed after) so I can get free parking there.

 
I’m a fan of going to restaurants by myself with my laptop so I can enjoy a nice meal alone while getting some work done and not feeling pressured to uphold a conversation. However, I do still occasionally like dining out with friends, which I did earlier this month at No.1 Kazoku Japanese Yakitori and Sushi Bar in San Gabriel, Cali­fornia.

Our opening dish was tuna belly nigiri. The cuts of fish were extremely high quality and were overwhelmingly rich in flavor.

Next were chicken skin and beef tongue skewers. I found these to be pretty underwhelming—the chicken skin just tasted intensely strongly of gamey chick­en flavor, and the beef tongue was overcooked and lacked the tenderness that you normally expect from tongue. However, my friend ab­so­lute­ly loved these, so much so that she texted me in the middle of the night, hours after dinner, telling me that she was still thinking about the chicken skin skew­er.

Next up was tuna carpaccio. This wasn’t bad, but was vastly overshadowed by the tuna belly nigiri from earlier.

Finally, the closing dish of our dinner was a chirashi bowl. It’s very rare that chirashi bowls come with sea urchin, and I’m glad that this one did, con­sidering that sea urchin is my favorite sushi. However, it also came with little chunks of a strange cold cooked fish, and I never really found out what it was.

 
Hello doggo.

 

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Hello, Naked Fish’s Sushi & Grill in Spring Valley, Las Vegas, Nevada

I have another trip to Southern California coming up, so for my last nice meal in Las Vegas before heading out, I decided to go to Naked Fish’s Sushi & Grill in Spring Valley, an unincorporated town in Clark County, Nevada.

They didn’t have any all-you-can-eat options, but upon browsing their menu, I found a seven-course dinner that I thought would be nice to try out. I expected the dishes to arrive omakase style, but they delivered five of the courses all at once and fairly quickly after ordering.

First was yuzu salmon. This was prepared as rolls of salmon belly sashimi topped with some garnish. The fish quality was incredible, the salmon fat had a powerful flavor, and the texture was some of the smoothest salmon belly I’ve ever had. The cuts of salmon were fairly thin, but because they were rolled into cylinders, it gave the effect of falling apart in your mouth but still having enough depth to it that it was satisfying.

Next was my choice of sushi roll. I picked a tiger roll, but my other options were a Lisa Lisa roll and Japanese lasagna. The tiger roll I received was a little bit different than what I’m used to getting at other sushi restaurants, but it was for the better—it had plenty of fish and a good balance of all ingredients such that no single flavor was overpowering.

Following the roll was six pieces of nigiri: bluefin tuna belly, tuna, salmon belly, yellowtail, scallop, and eel. Every single piece of nigiri was made with very high quality cuts of fish, and the ratio of fish to rice was perfect.

For sushi of this grade, I am used to the chef having already added a small smear of wasabi between the fish and rice so that they can control the potency; these pieces of nigiri did not have that, so I added in the wasabi myself (which obviously is not an issue, but I think is still worth mentioning, considering that the restaurant might want to raise the class of service and account for small luxuries to match the quality of the fish).

After having a lot of rich, fatty sushi, I was able to balance out my taste buds with some miso soup and tempura.

There were seven pieces of tempura: three shrimp, two different kinds of potato, one mushroom, and one onion.

For my final dish, which came out after I was close to finishing the prior five courses, I received grilled salmon collar. I usually think collar is overrated because of how difficult it is to eat and how little meat you get relative to the pricepoint at most restaurants, but this was the best salmon collar I’ve ever had. There was basically an entire salmon filet still attached to it that was perfectly cooked rare with a nice, crispy sear on the outside. This was also an extremely fatty cut, which made me happy that I was eating plenty of omega-3 fatty acids and improving my heart health.

For dessert, I got two pieces of mochi, one mango and one strawberry. This was very generic mochi and tasted about the same as the mochi you get from pretty much every other sushi restaurant.

There were a few other parties seated while I was eating, but I managed to snap a photo of the vibe of the restaurant between guests. Unfortunately, because of how dim it was, all of them ended up somewhat blurry, so this is the best shot I have.

Seven-course dinner  $ 68.00
Water  $  0.00
Sales tax  $  5.70
Gratuity  $ 13.30
Total  $ 87.00

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

High-end, multi-course dinners usually have portion sizes designed for the average person. I eat a lot, and this was actually my first meal of the day, so I was pretty hungry. Even then, after getting through all seven courses, I was pretty full up to the point where I probably wouldn’t have been able to finish the salmon collar if it wasn’t so delicious.

The tiger roll was pretty big and packed, there was a lot of tempura, and the filet attached to the salmon collar was large enough that someone with a small stomach might be able to eat just the salmon col­lar with a side of rice and call it a meal. Someone who only eats a normal and reasonable amount of food per meal will almost certainly take some of this to-go.

The service I received was very good. When I finished each course and pushed the empty dish to the edge of the table, it was always removed within a few minutes. When I set my empty water glass by the edge of the table, it was refilled within a few minutes or less. Occasionally throughout the meal, I had various different people checking in on me and making sure I didn’t want to order anything else or put in any special requests.

If you plan on going to this restaurant and trying out the seven-course dinner, I highly recommend letting your server know first so you can be seated at the bar to better emulate an omakase experience. I was fine seated alone at a booth because I had my laptop and I was getting some work done while eating, but this could absolutely act as an entry-level omakase for beginners or for budget-conscious diners who don’t want to spend over $120 for a single dinner.

 

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Hello, Sushi-Mon in Las Vegas, Nevada

For my next all-you-can-eat sushi adventure, I decided to try out Sushi-Mon on West Sahara Avenue in Las Vegas. I like going to restaurants by myself with my laptop so I can eat at a leisurely pace while I get some work done. Upon arrival, because I was alone, I agreed to be seated at the bar so I wouldn’t take up a table that could be used by a group, and so I could watch the chefs prepare sushi.

All-you-can-eat menus usually have a set of premium items that are limited to one order per person. These are usually the better sashimi items that are more expensive with bigger portions of fish and less rice. I put in my first round of dishes by picking their tuna poke salad, spicy seafood salad, and scream­ing orgasm. All of these were great—the cuts of fish were nice and thick, so the texture was very satisfying to bite through.

Next up were two appetizers, soft shell crab and two fresh oysters. The soft shell crab was about average and what you’d expect from soft shell crab. I’d say the oysters were a little above average; they were nice and refreshing, and the garnishments weren’t overpowering so they complemented the flavor of the oysters well.

The third round consisted of three different types of carpaccio: yellowtail, salmon, and seared pepper tuna. The yellowtail carpaccio was my favorite—the fish quality was good, and it had a nice smooth zest to it from the yuzu.

With the premium sashimi dishes done, I went on to order some nigiri. Each order comes with two pieces; I ordered one each of yellowtail, salmon, sweet shrimp, scallop, and escolar. The ratio of rice to fish was a little on the high side, but still within reason. Again, like the sashimi, the fish quality was great. The scallop was particularly noticeably more tender than average.

The grand finale was sea urchin gunkan. Sea urchin is my favorite type of sushi, so if a restaurant has it, I will almost always order it. The sea urchin at Sushi-Mon was decent, but unfortunately, the seaweed that wrapped the sea urchin and rice was unusually pungent and detracted from the flavor of the sea urchin.

To close out my meal, I got two desserts—one mango mochi and one scoop of green tea ice cream. The mochi tasted the same as the mochi you get from pretty much every sushi restaurant, but the green tea ice cream was better (though “better” is subjective here—I think it might have just been extra sweet, so it blocked a lot of the subtle bitter undertones you usually get from tea-flavored ice cream).

All-you-can-eat  $ 35.99
Water  $  0.00
Sales tax  $  3.01
Gratuity  $ 11.00
Total  $ 50.00

The table to the right shows how much I paid.

Compared to other all-you-can-eat spots I’ve been to in the Las Vegas Valley at this price point, I’d say Sushi-Mon is the winner so far.

The service was stellar. Both the server and the chef regularly checked in on me to ask if there was any­thing else I wanted to order. Many all-you-can-eat restaurants will intentionally delay checking in on you in hopes that you get full while waiting and order less, but Sushi-Mon did not do that. I usually only see this level of service at AYCE spots if it was almost empty, but Sushi-Mon maintained that level of ser­vice even though there were a bunch of other parties at the tables.

The fish quality was comparable to a more high-end sushi restaurant. The fish tasted fresher, the flavors were stronger, and the sauces and garnishments were made in a way that they let the fish speak for itself (as opposed to making it stronger as to cover up any flavor imperfections in the fish).

The environment was also pleasant. There were TVs playing in the background, the vibe was cozy, and all the staff members were friendly. I was doing some corporate law work while I was eating, and my waitress asked me about it, mentioning that she had previously studied law—a much more mean­ing­ful and interesting conversation than the usual small talk with other servers. Even the background music was to my preference—they were play­ing pop and pop-punk hits from a decade or two ago.

Usually I will recommend restaurants on an if-then basis, i.e., if you like a specific thing or don’t mind about a certain thing, then then restaurant is worth a visit. However, if you like sushi in general and want an all-you-can-eat sushi experience, Sushi-Mon is an unconditional recommendation for everyone from me.

To be clear, you can obviously get better sushi from a high-end omakase experience. However, for under $50, I think you’re going to have a very tough time finding something better.

 

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