Shunji

For eight years, from 2012 to 2020, Shunji occupied the wildest, most only-in-Los-Angeles location for a sushi bar possible: the Sawtelle restaurant operated out of a stuccoed 1930s-era building shaped like a soup bowl. Mr. Cecil’s California Ribs

was the previous tenant before Shunji Nakao took over the space, though over the decades it had also been home to a Mexican restaurant, a bar with the on-the-nose name of Roundhouse, a toy store and a real estate agency. It was originally constructed

and red bean paste. Some of the 16 small dishes are hot, so eat this quickly, perhaps with one of the chilled bottles of sake you can order with your boxes. Pickup only. 3455 Overland Ave., Los Angeles, n-naka.com Shunji Nothing contained in a box can

match the unbridled omakases Shunji Nakao serves from his sushi bar, but the bentos he composes still communicate his creative essence. If you find yourself celebrating solo, this might be the ticket: Ten exquisite pieces of nigiri, the rice underneath

Auburn    Bavel    Bestia    Bon Temps    Broken Spanish    The Brothers Sushi    Cassia    Crustacean    Dialogue    Pasjoli    Felix    n/naka    Shunji    Vaca    Vespertine   

eat sushi. I mention West L.A.’s Shunji and its chef, Shunji Nakao. “Ah, Shunji!” Azumi says. “We play golf and drink together.” Sweet shrimp nigiri appears alongside miso soup simmered with shrimp shells; one spindly, beady-eyed head bobs in the bowl

Shin Sushi   

startles with its precise and clean flavors. Shunji Nakao’s premium sushi box is a still-life of luxurious and immaculately prepared raw fish — buttery mackerel; firm, sweet kanpachi; the hard-to-find and beguilingly fatty blackthroat seaperch; springy

: “A Ducasse disciple quitting his job at an haute-cuisine pop-up to serve charred octopus tacos on a downtown street corner? You’re not going to find cooking like this anywhere else but L.A.” Shunji Nakao, a longtime chef at Matsuhisa and a founder of

Asanebo, opens his Sawtelle restaurant Shunji in a funny-shaped building once home to a Chili Bowl. He puts forth an Angeleno style of omakase interspersed with ingenious vegetable dishes. Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis launch industrial-chic Bestia in

for the tasting menu. 16101 Ventura Blvd., #255, Encino, (818) 646-6085, scratchbarla.com. Shunji   Dishes from chef Shunji Nakao at his restaurant Shunji in West Los Angeles. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) Dinner at Shunji, the playground of Shunji

. Pico Blvd. (near Centinela Avenue), Los Angeles, (310) 826-4737, shunji-ns.com.  Spring  Magret de Canard, maple leaf duck breast, salsify, pear, yam and sauce dolce forte at Spring. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) Spring is one of the loveliest

, but sushi still seems almost beside the point. Asanebo’s founders, Shunji and Tetsuya Nakao, were among the original chefs at Matsuhisa. Shunji left a few years ago and ended up opening the restaurant Shunji on the Westside, one of the very best

appetizer plate at Shunji Japanese Cuisine. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) The atavistic longings of Angelenos may be less for the Cobb salads, chiffon cakes and French dip sandwiches actually invented in the city than for pho, avocado toast and the kind

Korean rice salad is probably hwe dup bap, which involves cubes of raw fish, dried seaweed, chopped greens and more of that sweet, funky gojuchang, tossed in bowls as big as hubcaps. Would the fish at A-Won pass muster at Shunji? Does hwe dup bap