Photo dump from TwitchCon San Diego 2024

September 24, 2024, 3:09 AM PDT by Parkzer • Conventions, Face

For the past week, I’ve been in San Diego, California for TwitchCon 2024, a convention hosted by Twitch Interactive. If you remember my miserable experience from TwitchCon San Diego 2022, you might be surprised that I decided to attend again, but this year, I had actual “obligations” at the convention itself.

I still like to add an extra buffer day before and after my travel days to mitigate any delays and allow me to have additional flexibility in my schedule, so I arrived in town the evening of Wednesday and checked into my hotel room at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina next door to the San Diego Convention Center.

I’m still on a very unusual sleep schedule, so I went to the hotel gym at 4 AM to have a nice, peaceful, solitary workout session.

Because of my Ambassador Elite status with Marriott, I was fortunate enough to get an upgrade to a room with a nice view of the San Diego Bay, even though I booked the cheapest rate available.

I also have access to the lounge, where they serve complementary small bites, snacks, and desserts. I usually forget to take photos of my free food nowadays because it’s become a fairly routine part of my travel experience, but I did remember to take these three:

Apparently Honda was one of the sponsors of TwitchCon, and I officially present to them the “Most Boring Sponsor” award. I was told that they originally had the Twitch community design the car, but instead of going with the popular vote, they overrode the decision and basically designed it themselves anyway.

My automobile knowledge is fairly limited to within the world of pickup trucks, and the only thing I really know Honda for is that their pickup truck, the Honda Ridgeline, isn’t actually a real body-on-frame pickup truck and is basically just a minivan with a developmental disorder. With that being said, I’m not sure how they could’ve picked a more boring car than a Honda Civic to feature (and it’s not even a Type R).

This car looks like a kid designed it in Grand Theft Auto and then tried to convert it into a real-life car. The racing stripes look tacky. The vinyl wrap looks like someone wanted a nice satin black wrap but ran out of the proper color so went with a weird graphite instead. I can’t even tell what the design is on the rear passenger door, and the glossiness of it makes it look like someone just ripped a chunk out of the vinyl wrap.

I wasn’t interested in watching any of the shows, but this is what the stage looked like.

That night, we went to Meze Greek Fusion where they had a performer swing fire around everywhere. As you can see from the bottom-right corner, my friend Dan was very impressed.

I didn’t have an opportunity to walk through Artist’s Alley, but I did randomly take a picture of it from outside after the hall was closed.

On Saturday, my friend Doug Wreden and I held a Twitch-sponsored meet-and-greet session with convention attendees.

A photographer from Getty Images came over to our booth and asked to take a picture. Not only do I broadly hate paparazzi and the nature of their work, but I also strongly disagree with copyright law surrounding the likeness of public figures captured in photographs, so I will never intentionally pose for or make a paparazzo’s job easier. However, Doug was fine with it and specifically wanted to have the most ridiculous picture on Getty Images, so we ended up with this shot. (I did not realize I was in the frame because I assumed she would just be zooming in on Doug, so that is my genuine and unposed “…” expression.)

(Disclaimer: The following photograph from the Getty Images Entertainment collection, taken by Robin L. Marshall of Getty Images North America, is being used pursuant to the Embedded Viewer clause of the Getty Images Site Terms of Use as accessed on September 24, 2024. All rights belong to their respective owners.)

On Sunday, Doug hosted a show called “Just Figure It Out” where contestants had to… just figure it out. Each pair of the bracket had to come up with how they would determine the winner, and failing to do so after ten minutes would result in both players getting eliminated.

Edit (October 20, 2024): It was recently brought to my attention that a political extremist was in attendance at this show, as a competitor’s guest. During the show, I did not know who this individual was and I did not directly interact with her. Fortunately, she was also not at any point mentioned or shown in my blog post. Please note that being on the same broadcast as another person does not mean I share their beliefs or endorse their opinions.

My friend Abby and I were on standby as fill-ins in case any pairs got eliminated. Comically, one pair bet on the results of a second pair, and that second pair ended up getting disqualified for not being able to come up with a winner, so that resulted in a double-elimination, bringing both Abby and me into the tournament at the same time.

The way that Abby and I decided to figure it out was that we were going to go out onto the convention floor, find three random people who stream on Twitch, and bring them back into the room. We would then add together our three representatives’ follower counts on Twitch, and whomever had the team with the higher follower count would win.

Right as I explained this, I noticed some of Abby’s popular streamer friends (who were there as part of the show) sneak out onto the convention floor, so under the assumption that they might try to cheat and be Abby’s representatives, I slid in a last-second stipulation that the people we bring into the room have to be people who do not know us.

After getting all the rules locked in, Abby and I sprinted out into the convention.

I ran around searching for streamers and ended up finding three of them, but on my way back, I ran into Ludwig Ahgren, who has over 3 million followers on Twitch. I successfully convinced him to come join my team, and I returned to the room assuming I had just secured my victory.

I forgot about one thing. The one thing I forgot… was my own rule that I created to protect myself. Ludwig knows who I am. He was disqualified from being on my team. Abby somehow found someone with over one and a half million followers. I suffered a tragic defeat.

Here are some photos from the show that I took. I feel like these work better without any context or commentary.

For our final TwitchCon dinner together on Sunday night, we went to Zama San Diego.

As our first appetizer, we ordered pan-seared crab cake with red beet truffle aioli and avocado.

Our second appetizer was New Zealand lamb chop lollipops with chimichurri and pomegranate seeds.

For my main entrée, I ordered a sushi roll and wagyu beef nigiri.

Although TwitchCon still isn’t really my thing, this year went way better than previous years. The meet-and-greet went reasonably well. I’ve had some issues during previous conventions with Doug’s fans being invasive and acting childishly towards me, but that didn’t seem to be as bad of a problem this time around, compared to before.

Doug’s show was fantastic, and even though I’m not really in streamer friend groups and I actively try to avoid association with streamer culture, I still enjoyed my time participating in the show. It also helped that the person I competed against was Abby, who I see as an intelligent and business-minded professional, even though she works with live streamers.

I don’t know for sure whether or not I’m attending TwitchCon again next year, but if I’m invited to host a meet-and-greet and make an appearance on a show again, then I’d say the chances are decent.

I accidentally purchased two new luggages

September 18, 2024, 11:27 PM PDT by Parkzer • General

At the end of last month, my friend Doug Wreden held his annual charity event for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation to raise funds for ocean conservation. The stretch goal for raising half a million dollars, inspired by an inside joke from a prior live broadcast he had done, was for him and me to go to New Zealand to purchase cologne and visit the aquarium.

The fundraising event was a huge success, raising US$625,376.68 this year and elevating his all-time total to over a million dollars. At the end of the two-day event, I knew that we would be going to New Zealand, so I slowly began making preparations.

I was born in the United States and have only gone out of the country once when I road tripped into Canada, so this will be my first real international trip beyond North America. I thought about what I would need to buy to get ready to travel abroad. I realized that the only luggage I have is carry-on-sized, and I figured that I would need to purchase something bigger.

I started conducting some research on the best luggages available on the market, and the rabbit hole led me to brands like LuggageWorks and Briggs and Riley that are often used and endorsed by pilots, as well as manufacturers like Rimowa and Tumi that market themselves as luxury brands. However, one particular company caught my eye… Victorinox.

Victorinox is the original maker of the Swiss army knife. I browsed their travel gear selection and became interested in their metallic red Spectra 3.0 expandable medium case. I travel a lot and have seen some red luggages, but never one of this deep red tone and shade, so the idea of having a visually unique and distinct luggage was appealing to me.

Additionally, the Spectra 3.0 line is made out of SORPLAS™, a high-performance polycarbonate by Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation. This means that, even though the luggage has a metallic look, it’s actually made from a proprietary plastic, so it’s more resistant to dents and other surface-warping damage than real metal would be, as well as bearing a handful of other features (though I guess a downside of that is that it would no longer develop a patina over time that I usually like to see on my belongings).

It definitely wasn’t cheap, though—the price tag was US$650.00 before tax, which wasn’t the most expensive luggage I looked at, but still a sizable chunk of money. After consideration, I decided I would test out a cheaper version of the Spectra 3.0 before committing to the more expensive one, so I bought the Spectra 3.0 expandable cabin case, sized as standard carry-on luggage, for US$575.00.

After its arrival, I tested it out by unzipping everything, checking out all the pockets, rolling it around a bit, and inspecting all the components. The color was just as nice in-person as I expected from the photos on Victorinox’s website, the build quality seemed pretty good, and I was overall satisfied with my purchase. I concluded that the Spectra 3.0 line was good enough that I was comfortable committing to the more expensive and larger checked bag, so I put in an order for the medium case too.

After a short wait, the expandable medium case also arrived. The quality was consistent with the smaller carry-on luggage, in that everything was good and I was satisfied with my purchase.

Moments later, I got stunlocked for a good minute or so while I came to two epiphanies:

The size of your luggage has nothing to do with international travel. Just because you travel internationally does not mean you have to bring a checked bag. The thing that determines the size of luggage you should bring is the duration of your trip, not the location of your destination. A single carry-on bag has plenty of space for me to pack a week and a half’s worth of belongings.
It makes absolutely no sense to purchase a similar smaller item to “test out” a larger version of that item. This would be reasonable if you buy an item, retain all its original packaging, and test it out during its return period with the expectation that you would send it back for a refund if it did not meet your quality bar. Buying a different item as a test product, buying the actually-desired item days later, then trashing all the packaging on both products is… incorrect.

So anyway, I am now the somewhat proud but mostly confused owner of two new Victorinox Spectra 3.0 luggages that I don’t actually need.

Hello, Good Sushi in Lincolnshire, Illinois

September 13, 2024, 8:57 PM PDT by Parkzer • Food

With PAX West having just wrapped up earlier this month and TwitchCon starting two weeks later, I took this lull in my schedule in between the two events as an opportunity to visit my parents in the Chicagoland suburbs.

I’ve been going to a lot of chef’s tasting menu and omakase restaurants lately, but I found out that my parents had never been to an omakase experience before, so I decided to treat them to their very first one at Good Sushi in Lincolnshire, Illinois.

As our first course, we received a vinaigrette shot with oyster and ikura. All my photos of the glass were out of focus so I don’t have any to share, but it was a good opener that had a strong kick of sourness to get us primed for our meal.

Next was chawanmushi, which is Japanese steamed egg custard. This was pure chawanmushi with nothing added into it, which was a bit unexpected (as there is usually mushrooms, sea urchin, roe, and/or vegetables added in), but it was still good in quality and had a clean flavor.

Next was octopus atop a medium tomato filled with cheese. I’m usually not a big fan of cheese, but whatever type they used was mild enough that it didn’t overwhelm the dish. The taste of the octopus had something distinct and different to it that I couldn’t quite figure out, but the flavor was good and the texture was satisfying.

Afterwards, we received abalone topped with sauce made from abalone intestines.

This was my favorite dish of the meal. This was the most tender abalone I had ever had, and the chef said that it was probably because he prepares it by steaming it over six hours. This was my first time ever having abalone intestines, and it wasn’t quite like anything else I’ve ever tasted before; the closest thing I can think of is monkfish liver, but even then, the intestines still had something very unique to it that I can only explain as a weighted blanket of umami.

Our next dish was fish shoulder, though I managed to miss what kind of fish it was, and I somehow couldn’t tell just by the taste. This was thoroughly marinated with a house-made sauce, so it tasted like generic but very clean fish with a good amount of saltiness and a very light tinge of sweetness.

The chef added a nice touch to this shoulder dish—he made sure to keep track of the plates so that my parents each got one shoulder off the same fish.

While we were consuming the previous dishes, the chef started preparing the sashimi for our nigiri.

While the chef continued to slice the sashimi, the waiter came out with some miso soup and side dishes.

Our next eight items were eight pieces of nigiri.

The fish for all eight pieces were cut very thick. Usually at countertop omakase experiences, you grab each piece of nigiri with your fingers and finish it in one bite, but these were large enough that I had each in two bites. Because of that, the portion size added up quickly and was pretty filling and satisfying.

As our final piece of sushi, we received a spicy tuna hand roll. I’m personally not the biggest fan of spicy tuna because I think the sauce overwhelms the flavor of the tuna, but still, this was a nice addition to the menu to have some variety.

For dessert, we each got a fairly sizable portion of matcha tiramisu topped with strawberry.

This was a little bit too sweet for my preference, but the earthiness of the matcha powder helped balance things out a bit.

Here’s a shot of the kitchen area beside the bar where we were served.

Omakase was $125 per person, and with $33.75 in taxes and $72 for gratuity, the total came to US$480.75.

The omakase chef is the owner of the restaurant, and he is Korean. That wasn’t too helpful for me because I didn’t get to interact with him much considering his somewhat limited English, but it was great for my parents, because they were able to talk with him in their native language and learn more about the food they were served.

I thought this was a solid omakase dinner landing squarely within satisfactory expectations of a meal at this pricepoint. To add some context, I’ve been to a lot of nice restaurants in major coastal cities, so my rating has that kind of perspective behind it; with that in mind, you could argue that this restaurant was actually very good, considering that it is out in the suburbs over 30 miles away from downtown Chicago and likely does not have access to the same resources and quality of ingredients as coastal cities.

If you’re interested in checking it out, note that you’ll need to book a reservation at least 48 hours ahead. I imagine this is one of the side effects of being in a less populated area—they have an à la carte menu, but it seems like omakase is not always fully booked, so you’ll need to give the chef a heads up so he can shop for fresh ingredients and put together the day’s menu for you.

Hello, 84 Yesler in Seattle, Washington

September 5, 2024, 3:56 AM PDT by Parkzer • Food

While in Seattle, Washington for PAX West, I met up with my friend Dani (who you may remember as the owner of Mina) and had dinner at 84 Yesler, a restaurant in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of downtown.

We wanted to try as many different dishes as possible, so we ordered a combination of their six-course tasting menu and a few items à la carte.

To start, we received an amuse-bouche with fig, goat cheese, and edible flower.

I’m usually not a big fan of goat cheese (or much cheese in general), but this goat cheese had a mild flavor that lacked the moldiness that cheeses usually have. The fig had a smooth flavor without having too much of a kick. The texture of the fig was a perfect balance between firmness and softness. This actually ended up being Dani’s favorite dish of the entire meal.

As our appetizer, Dani is a big fan of oysters, so we got a half dozen oysters, which came with a side of gin cocktail sauce, mignonette, and lemon.

The oysters tasted great—they were neither too strong nor too mild. The juices were also great, and their flavor contributed nicely to the overall flavor of the oysters. There was no grit or other unwanted textures from slurping straight out of the shell.

Next, our first dish of the tasting menu came out—tempura squash blossom with whipped goat cheese and garlic honey.

This was the one and only dish that I disliked from this restaurant. Even though the goat cheese from the amuse-bouche was fine, the goat cheese from this tempura was not fine and had the typical moldy smell and taste to it, which masked any other flavor of the tempura squash from coming through.

Our first à la carte small plate came out next, beef tartare with crispy shallots, egg yolk jam, crostini, parmesan, and capers.

I think this is the best beef tartare I’ve ever had. The beef was extremely rich in flavor, and all the toppings served a perfect purpose balanced between adding their own flavor while also enhancing the existing flavor of the beef tartare. These were also the mildest capers I’ve ever tried, which worked very well—their sourness was far more subtle than what you’d usually expect from capers, so they managed to add all the core flavor of capers without causing too much extra intensity.

I portioned out our brick of tartare and ate them one bite at time atop the bread. Even the crostini was prepared perfectly—I’m used to it being a bit too crispy and sometimes hurting the inside of my mouth, but this crostini was overall pretty soft while still retaining some of the crunch around the edges.

The second course of the tasting menu was grilled unagi, also known as saltwater eel, atop brioche and with ponzu and micro herbs.

This eel was very tender. At other restaurants, eel is usually served with too much eel sauce already on it, but this eel was only lightly sauced, so it let the true flavor of the eel shine through well. At first, I was confused about and questioned the choice of serving it on this kind of bread, but I was quickly proven wrong with my first bite when I realized how well the bread went along with the eel.

The third course of the tasting menu was kelp gnocchi with red pepper caviar sauce and fumet.

The gnocchi had a deep earthiness to it, and somehow managed to capture that flavor without any bitterness whatsoever. The sauce was indescribably delicious and was a great example of how a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you really focused in on the flavors, you could technically detect the individual ingredients, but overall, it was an entirely different experience.

The portion of the sauce was too much compared to the amount of gnocchi we were served, but that was no problem at all—Dani and I just drank the sauce like it was soup.

We also ordered a second pasta dish to go along with the tasting menu one—fine herbs pappardelle with lemon beurre blanc, Dungeness crab, and fine herb oil.

This was the most unique pasta I’ve ever seen. Each piece of pappardelle was extremely thick and long, and you could see that there were herbs placed and trapped directly inside the pappardelle in layers. This dish wasn’t otherworldly like the gnocchi, but it was still very delicious.

Fourth from the tasting menu was dry-aged salmon with toasted kombu dashi, zucchini, and pickled garlic scape.

I have never before seen salmon skin prepared this perfectly. Usually, when you cook salmon skin, it ends up somewhere on the gradient of rubbery and brittle, and the more you cook it, the more rubberiness it loses and the more brittle it becomes in a mutually exclusive way. This salmon skin somehow leapt off the standard gradient and captured both at the same time—it had the texture of fish skin, but it wasn’t dry or crumbly.

The zucchini was also notably nice. You can tell by the photo that it looks fairly burnt, but surprisingly, it was merely a bit charred. You’d expect that much black to yield a very bitter flavor, but this wasn’t bitter at all, and the burned portions added a very subtle charcoal grill-esque addition to the zucchini.

The tasting menu’s fifth course was short rib with baby patty pan, wild mushrooms, and truffle jus.

The short rib wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything special. This tasted like generic short rib that you’d find from any other restaurant.

To accompany the main course of the tasting menu, we also added on American wagyu ribeye with crispy polenta, parsnip, and pesto.

This ribeye was much better than the short rib. I could tell that it wasn’t exactly the utmost highest grade of wagyu, but the marbling was still great and it had the familiar, satisfying taste you expect from high-quality wagyu.

Dani and I each had a couple strips of this wagyu, then she got the rest packaged to-go so she could share it with her boyfriend and housemate back at home. Dani reheated it for them in the oven and reported back to me that they both enjoyed the food.

For the tasting menu’s dessert, we received sweet corn with white chocolate coconut ganache, candied jalapeño, and fresh blackberries.

This dish was magical. Popcorn often has some of the leftover residue in the center from the popped kernel, but somehow, all of this popcorn was completely soft all the way through. The sweetness of the caramel coating was subtle, which allowed the actual flavor of the caramel to shine through in a way I’ve never seen before. Every aspect of this dessert was incredible, and I made sure to get a small portion of each ingredient in every bite because of how well everything complemented everything else.

The sweet corn and blackberries was so good that it convinced Dani to order a second dessert à la carte. We decided on apple cake with honeycrisp sorbet, sweet apple brandy cream, and a candied apple slice.

This one wasn’t as miraculous as the previous dessert, but it was still delicious. They did a great job of balancing sweetness with sourness, as well as mixing together a good variety of textures so your mouth always has something interesting to experience.

To close the night, we received complimentary chocolates along with our check.

Here are some photos I took of the restaurant before it got dark. We spent almost three hours eating at 84 Yesler because the food was so good and we kept on ordering more and more, so if you pay attention to the photos, you can tell that it was still bright outside and my photos were illuminated by natural sunlight at the beginning of our meal, but our desserts have a warm glow from the overhead lighting after nightfall.

Six-course tasting menu	$ 160.00
Oysters	$ 30.00
Beef tartare	$ 29.00
Fine herbs pappardelle	$ 40.00
America wagyu ribeye	$ 80.00
Apple cake	$ 15.00
Automatic gratuity (20%)	$ 70.80
Sales tax	$ 43.97
Total	$ 468.77

The table on the right shows how much we paid.

84 Yesler has solidly landed itself as one of my top favorite restaurants that I’ve been to this year, alongside Yakiniku Shodai and Masamitsu.

Just because I’ve historically been so outspoken about this, I wanted to address this point first—I’m not a big fan of mandatory service charges, and if a restaurant wants to do that, I believe they should just increase the price of their menu items and then decline gratuity instead. However, in 84 Yesler’s defense, they made the 20% automatic gratuity very clear and apparent on both their website and their paper menus, so the way they executed on it was done in a very transparent and honest manner.

Back to the food. 84 Yesler’s style of cooking might not be for everyone, but for me, it feels like the chef custom-catered the cooking style to match my preferences perfectly. Nothing was too much of anything—not too salty, not too sweet, not too bitter, not too fatty. No single ingredient stood out or was noticeable, but working together, they created new flavor profiles that I had not tasted before at any other restaurants.

In other words, pretty much every ingredient they used was mild, but because each dish had a very well-calculated recipe to it, the mildness worked favorably. To create an analogy: if you have a very strong strawberry, very strong blueberry, and very strong raspberry, each berry’s flavor will stick out and it will taste like you are eating a strawberry, blueberry, and raspberry. However, 84 Yesler’s style is comparable to using a mild strawberry, mild blueberry, and mild raspberry so that you can’t distinctly taste each individual berry, but instead, it tastes like you are consuming a well-balanced medley of fresh fruit.

The ambiance of the restaurant was also very unique. Dani and I were seated at a small table in the corner right next to the window, and I think it was the best possible seat we could’ve gotten. It let us get some sunlight for a good portion of our meal, we were able to people-watch on Yesler Way, and we were in a secluded area so we weren’t surrounded by other patrons. The kitchen was open and viewable by diners, which allowed us to watch our food get prepared, but because we were towards the corner, we didn’t get affected by the heat of the kitchen, and the smells didn’t reach our table so it allowed us to purely enjoy our dishes as the chef intended without any other scents.

Speaking of purity, one thing I appreciated was the fact that the waitress fully swapped out our utensils and plates in between every single course. Not all restaurants do this, but I think this is a great indicator of how much the chef cares about the flavor profile of all the dishes. Having clean tableware for every dish means that no sauces or residue from previous dishes interfere with future dishes, and that level of attention to detail shows that 84 Yesler is actual fine dining.

On the note of fine dining, 84 Yesler doesn’t really present itself as fine dining. In fact, they actually seem pretty casual, and the way to recognize their level of fine dining is by experiencing the quality of the food and service. I hate when other restaurants pretend to be luxurious by aggressively doing exaggerated things often associated with luxury and then inflate their prices, but something just feels off. 84 Yesler is the exact opposite—they actively keep things subtle, but their indisputable classiness speaks for itself.

If you can’t tell by now, I highly recommend 84 Yesler. The pricepoint is definitely on the higher end, but if it’s something that is financially doable for you, I think the ratio of value you get per dollar from this restaurant is very high.

Hello, PAX West 2024 in Seattle, Washington

September 1, 2024, 7:01 PM PDT by Parkzer • Conventions

For the third year in a row, I decided to make a trip over to Seattle, Washington to attend PAX West.

Usually, I go to watch my friends host their shows—like “Fight Mii” at PAX West 2022, and “Fight Mii” and “Friends ’til Death” at PAX West 2023. Unfortunately, my usual PAX travel group decided not to submit any panels this year and nobody else in my party ended up going… and I didn’t find out they weren’t until my flight and lodging were already booked. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of changing travel plans, so I decided to go anyway on my own.

This year’s PAX West was about the same as what you’d expect from any other PAX. The exhibitor hall was basically a gigantic collection of advertisements, and most of the interesting booths with compelling interactive experiences had long lines. The other areas of the convention center were nice, but not really for me—there was plenty of space for people to be able to chat and bond over some games, but I’m not really the type of person to socialize with strangers at a convention. It also probably doesn’t help much that I’ve gradually been losing interest in gaming in general over the past handful of years.

One thing I noticed was that it felt a lot less crowded this year. I’m not sure if ticket sales were just low this year or something, but one thing I do know is that, with the new Summit building of the Convention Center opening, there was a ton more space for people to be spread out. Summit is a six-level building, and it seemed like all of that additional square footage was put to very good use.

I have friends who live in Seattle, so I’ve been spending time with them outside of the convention, and will continue to do so until I fly out in a few more days. However, I guess this is a decent lesson learned that I shouldn’t book my travel too early next time and actually confirm first that my regular PAX group will also be attending.

Below are some photos I took while exploring the Arch and Summit buildings of the Seattle Convention Center.

Hello, Sushi Sasabune Glendale in Los Angeles County, California

August 23, 2024, 7:56 PM PDT by Parkzer • Food

I’m back in Southern California for a little bit again in preparation for joining one of my friends for a 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.