Friday, June 20, 2008

Izayoi Izakayas

132 S Central Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 613-9554

Category: Japanese
Neighborhood: Little Tokyo

3 star rating
06/20/2008

Good food, excellent service. 12 of us dined here last night taking the largest table they had. I'd suggest a party of 10 or less as it was a little cramped for two in our party. We had the mussels, shrimp & jalapeno spring rolls, shrimp dumplings, albacore salad, eggplant, both types of pork belly, tuna sashimi & yam, buckwheat noodles, softshell crab rolls, fried chicken and a few more dishes.

With a couple of beers, my share ran me $50 including tip. Pricey considering izakaya joints are supposed to be bar food and not too expensive. The shrimp dumpling cost $5 for 2 large dumplings. They were tasty but 1/2 mile away in Chinatown, I could buy 3 orders of dim sum that had 3-4 dumplings for $5. I looked over the sushi bar and the fish in the counter looked outstanding. Next time I go here, I'd go with 1-2 friends and sit at the sushi bar. They had live baby abalone and quoted me $20 for an order, not clear if that was for sashimi or nigiri sushi or the whole abalone. The albacore and yellowtail looked really fresh and we ordered the albacore salad and the fish was indeed excellent.

The pork belly dishes were my favs as was shrimp jalapeno spring rolls.

Great parking as you are allowed to park in the Office Depot lot. I'd come back here for sushi, but for izakaya, I'd much rather go to Haru Ulala and pay 1/2 the price. If the prices were comparable to HU, I'd give them 4 stars, maybe more! No reservations unless we rsvp'ed at 6:30pm for our party of 12.

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