SUSHI SASBUNE – Los Angeles

If you didn’t grow up in LA (or, you know, Japan), your sushi experiences probably amounted to mysterious California rolls in the one Japanese restaurant in town, grocery store spicy salmon rolls, or hand rolls made with canned tuna . Your first omakase (the Japanese tradition of letting a chef choose your order) is always a revelation. The first time we had omakase was at Sasabune. 

So while we will keep going back to Sasabune because it’s the place where we really learned to love sushi, you should get here because it’s one of the best examples of classic LA omakase.

You can order off a menu at Sasabune, but to be honest, we’ve never even looked at the thing. We went twice and we always had the omakase. At around $130, it’s certainly not cheap, but you get a whole lot of very high-quality sushi.

A meal here starts with sashimi, ends with a crab hand roll, and involves many pieces of nigiri in between. But you’ll also get an oyster, a scallop (still in its shell), a baked mussel, some crazy good cooked butterfish, and uni if you want it. Fish varieties change depending on what’s available, but you’ll rarely encounter anything especially advanced. The menu barely changes between visits, but everything is as fresh as it could possibly be. The space is also what you’d expect when it comes to classic LA sushi – a little storefront, no interior design to speak of, and a sushi bar that’s really the only place you should be sitting.

Overall, the food was definitely worthy and for the price we didn’t think it was over-priced by any stretch.