New L.A. Restaurants Offering Twist on Japanese Bar Food

Not long ago, Los Angeles went through its new-wave tapas bar cycle. Then its gentrified gastropub moment. Now the town’s next-gen izakaya era may be peaking. These fresh takes on the traditional Japanese drinking tavern still specialize in small, shareable dishes, but do so with a notable irreverence.

This started a few years ago with Echo Park’s Tsubaki (1356 Allison Ave.). It’s become a crowded destination not just for its yakitori and yaki-onigiri but also echt-Angeleno plates like a Caesar salad featuring panko breadcrumbs and a creamy miso parmesan dressing, as well as “latkes” topped with dry-aged Ora King salmon, pickled veggies and yuzu scallion crème fraîche.

Since this fall, Dan Rabilwongse, a Thai chef who’d worked at Tsubaki, has been operating the nearby, high-energy Budonoki (654 Virgil Ave.), whose neo-noir interiors are out of a Nicolas Winding Refn production. His menu runs from a charred Japanese sweet potato covered in miso butter to a rendition of gnocchi studded with Shimeji mushrooms.

Across town, in Venice, the previously Med-minded Gran Blanco (80 Windward Ave.) suddenly pivoted toward Shinjuku’s Golden Gai, turning out chicken katsu sandwiches and fries featuring furikake salt. Meanwhile, down the road, chef Travis Lett — famed for Gjelina and Gjusta — has resuscitated his long-shuttered MTN into RVR (1305 Abbot Kinney Blvd.), a contempo-izakaya that sources its squid from Monterey and its Peads & Barnetts pork belly from San Diego County.

Among the newest offerings is Hollywood’s noted Tokyo import Rokusho (6630 Sunset Blvd.), a moody Brutalist hideaway that’s gone native with hyperlocalized ingredients and unconventional genre offerings like an uni tostada and slices of kombucha tempura dipped not in soy sauce but, instead, a truffle-honey glaze. Executive chef Carlos Couts, who’s from L.A., prefers to avoid the izakaya label. “It confines the cooking and the service expectations to a box,” he says. “We’re taking Japanese traditions and reinventing and elevating them for Californian palates.” 

This story appeared in the Jan. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.