la.foodblogging

I’ve recently returned from travels in Japan, and my husband and I are experiencing some serious nostalgia already. Accordingly, we’ve had to eat a lot of Japanese food in the past month. So one of the things on our “to do” list was to check out Gonpachi on La Cienega. Gonpachi is a true import of Japan; over there it is a chain restaurant serving homemade soba noodle dishes and “kushi”-style meats and vegetables (”kushi” means “skewer”). The kushi dishes are “sumiyak,” which means grilled on an open-flame charcoal grill.

The feeling I got when walking up to the entrance of Gonpachi was very Benihana-esque. To get to the door from the parking lot you travel through a Japanese garden setting with a little bridge and a tiny stream. I didn’t see, but I am sure there are koi in the pond part. Inside there is a small lobby that separates the dining area from the bar area. Ensconced on a little booth, a chef makes fresh soba noodles for your entertainment and anticipation. It’s really neat to watch, but at the same time, the booth is so small, and is isolated from any sort of kitchen or anything, so it’s very zoo-like…

Your hostess then takes you back to the spacious dining room. My first impression was-AAUGH! Because when you walk in, the host suddenly yells something and all the cooks yell back and it’s loud and startling, but also kind of fun. I noticed that the yelling got more lackluster as the night went on, or perhaps was less noticeable as the room filled with the noise of patrons, so if you are fragile or have a heart condition you might want to make a later reservation, or come prepared!

My second impression was that the dining room was really large, with a floor level, a side-booth level and a balcony level. Everything is dark woods and paper lanterns. The booths on the side are nice because they are covered with a little roof and recessed with high sides so they feel private even though they are not. It should be said that Gonpachi was the inspiration for the “House of Blue Leaves” in “Kill Bill” where the large fight scene takes place between the “Bride” and the “Crazy 88.” So if you remember that, that’s what Gonpachi looks like.

Oh yeah … the food. We ordered a succession of dishes as well as some sake. Cheers to our waiter, who, when he found that they were out of our chosen bottle of sake, brought us a different one that was not on the menu but that he felt matched closely with or choice. Honestly, I know jack about sake so I have no way to know how close he got, but it was good.

We got what seemed like thousands of dishes, so in order to not go on for ages, I am choosing to describe the dishes where the pictures came out the best.

I started with a grilled corn with parmesan cheese and a chile-lime butter. It was really good, although the butter was not as flavorful as the butter I imagined in my mind, it was still buttery wth some kick and tang. I also couldn’t figure out how to get the cheese to stay on the corn, so I ended up putting as much on as I could and then just kind of eating the rest of the cheese by itself with my hands like a savage.

This is a tuna tartare with cucumber, kaiware, lotus root chips, quail egg, and Gochujang. Kaiware is the sprouts of the daikon radish and is a spicy sprout. Gochujang is a spicy condiment from Korea made from glutinous rice, fermented soybeans, red chili powder and salt, and then fermented in the sun.

This is the homemade soba. The menu explained to us that soba is made of buckwheat, which many people think is a grain but is actually a fruit seed related to rhubarb. This is the Inaka Seiro Soba, which is a cold soba with wasab, scallion, and “dipping sauce” that turned out to be a fish sauce.

This is one of the sumiyaki skewers, a wagyu skirt steak with moromiso. Moromiso is a fermented barley miso.

This is my tako sushi roll. Tako is octopus and is something I have recently discovered I like alot. I can deal with the chewy texture a lot better than I can the slimy-smooth texture of raw fish. This wasn’t the best octopus I have had, but it was a nice snack.

This is the vegetable roll of asparagus, avocado, cucumber, and yamagobo. Yamagobo is a pickled burdock root. The rolls were a large bite and coated in sesame seeds that gave them a nice crunch. What can I say? These are veggie rolls, so if you love fish sushi and sashimi you are not going to get to excited at the prospect of a vegetable roll. If you are a vegetarian though, happy days! This is a little more exciting than your average veg roll.

And this is the vegetable sushi combination. It’s avocado, grilled shiitake, Japanese eggplant, okra, myoga, and menegi. Myoga is the pink thing above that’s second from the left. It’s a wild Japanese ginger that grows in the woods, the flavor is more delicate than normal ginger and the texture is crisp. Menegi is an onion sprout. It’s the one that looks like a bunch of chives. You can use it to remove the odor of fish or meat if you rub the sprout across the meat.

Sadly, the best thing I had could not be captured in a photograph. By far the best dish I had was one of the sumiyaki - king oyster mushroom with butter soy sauce. I could tell from the twinkle in the waiter’s eye when I ordered it that I had made the right choice. The mushroom soaked up all the butter and was bursting with it. It was completely juicy and and it all explodes into our mouth when you eat it.

I have to say that when I went to Gonpachi, I was expecting a lot of atmosphere and so-so food, but the food was better than I thought. The menu is definitely for California-flavored than the Japanese menu, but is still quite similar. The timing was a little helter-skelter, and we had to wait for one dish so long that everyone was sitting around with empty plates for a long time while we waited for one okra skewer. But this was within two weeks of opening so they may need some time to get some things worked out.

All in all, it was an enjoyable evening, with good food and a fun atmosphere. The night we were there, there was a reunion or wedding party or something and all the people walking around in kimono added to the atmosphere. Recommended if you’re in the mood for a more sophisticated version of Benihana.

Gonpachi
134 N. La Cienega Blvd.
(Wilshire Blvd.)
Beverly Hills, CA
310-659-8887

Who else has been to Gonpachi?

• Mikey Hates Everything
• Gourmet Magazine
• Tune In Tokyo

By KT (see more of her posts). You can find more of KT's writing at her own website Gastronomy 101.