Directly translated as “I’ll leave it up to you,” omakase offers an intimate, rarefied dining experience in which the chef chooses, sometimes at the spur of the moment, what gets served depending on available ingredients or the day’s catch. In lieu of a fixed menu, the customer entrusts the chef to do the ordering. Omakase is the preferred way of service for esteemed sushi masters, though it’s not limited to sushi.
The L.A. branch of the Tokyo-based Sushi Ginza Onodera, which has two Michelin stars, imports high-quality seafood from Tokyo’s Toyosu Market and rice from the Niigata prefecture. The restaurant’s 23-course omakase meal — featuring immaculate slices of bluefin tuna, golden eye snapper and Hokkaido scallop layered atop cubes of vinegar-infused rice — is priced at $400 per head.
“I aim to let you experience Japan’s four seasons and savor various regional fish as if you were traveling through Japan,” executive chef Yohei Matsuki wrote in an email.
Matsuki, who trained for years at the restaurant’s Tokyo outpost, said he’s committed to using only Japan-sourced ingredients because “the quality control and handling of fish” by people in Japan’s fishing industry “are among the best in the world.”
Like many other modern sushi masters, Matsuki said he deploys late 19th-century Edomae-style techniques, such as marinating ingredients in soy sauce and curing them in salt or kombu sea kelp — a process that could last a few hours to several days.
Matsuki said he’s pleased that traditional Japanese cuisine has garnered greater critical appreciation in recent years. “I hope this will increase awareness of Japanese culture among people from around the world,” he said.
Experts say the omakase boom took off in L.A. — because the city’s historic Little Tokyo enclave, founded in the late 19th century, was once the largest Japanese community in the country. It has long served as the country’s epicenter of Japanese food,…
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