Hakata

Bland and boring, this sushi place on Wilshire (somewhere in between 14th and 26th) has new owners with an old look. OK--I have been to places with worse decor but better sushi but this place is as strange as they come. Nice, "Denny's"style booths (not really that unlike Isshin which is one of my favorite places) were strangely complimented by sports and beer paraphernalia all over the walls. The bar had 4 TVs all with different sports games on -- very well set-up. The tables had white table clothes covered with glass counter tops and pink napkins. The walls were blue. The bar stools has bright purple cushins. I'm not seeing any sort of theme.

But the food! I ordered seared albacore, which was a little dry though the ponzu sauce was very good. The salmon was a little tough and I made a mess trying to bite off half of it. Cucumbers made their way into my yellowtail scallion roll which was otherwise very tasty. A 12 oz Sapporo was a little expensive at $5. After I ordered, I noticed some specials hanging on the wall over the sushi bar -- I could have gotten fresh albacore or tried some more toro.

The treat of the evening was a complimentary Sojourn (from the "new owners" who were conspicuously absent or hiding among the waitstaff). Nice after dinner drink to sip on. I wish I had taken a little more time sipping. I somehow confused the place by choosing the pay for my drinks and food with the same credit card. Between getting my food bill from the waiter and getting things racked up on my credit card I had an eternity to ponder the meal and notice more and more oddities about my surroundings, such as a Christmas-tree looking aloe plant included--three feet of perfectly placed aloe stems with a bow on top. It was one of those times when you expect you could write a detailed second-by-second recollection of what happened that would somehow manage to be amusing when the 10 minutes that passed seemed like an hour. Those moments included the waiter breezing by which stacks of food and other people's bills, the bartender trying to figure out how to pour saki from one of those large containers, a seemingly non-sushi couple sitting down, knowing the bartender, and asking the difference between the $9 and $15 bottles of saki, as if they were used cars, the sound of a manual calculator going to add up orders, a sushi chef paging through a magazine, and the bustle of 3 people looking at my bill as if to figure the whole thing out--geez it was only $20!