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[edit] Restaurant Information

Name: Suzumaru

Address: 17292 McFadden Ave. #B, Tustin, CA 92780

Phone #: (714) 665-1300

Website: www.suzumaru-usa.com

[edit] Description

[edit] Reviews

"We stopped by Suzumaru about 6 years ago, and found just a basic suburban sushi bar. All-anglo clientele, a roll-dominated place that had nothing but die-hard loyalists eating their 500th order of same-ol'-same.

We heard it changed hands and was favorably mentioned in the past few years. But we forgot about it. It's really not the kind of place you'd expect a decent Japanese place to be, despite the fact that within 3 blocks you have Wasabi, an omakase-only sushi bar, and Yoshino, which can always be counted on for quality. Still, behind McClure's, next to a decrepit Indian joint and across the street from a bat-cave of dense Latino housing? It's not where I troll for kaiseki.

We tried Suzumaru a couple of weeks back, and I was offended when they put us at a table while the sushi bar was empty. Many tables were occupied, but I felt kinda diss'ed. Then, while sullen, Nancy made her move and got all her favorites and the dishes were large. While we ate, a large retinue appeared and were seated at the bar. It was a pre-arranged party. After eating our fill we left, and all I'd had was tofu and seaweed salad. For me, this wasn't optimum.

Two weeks later clearly Nancy was eager to get back. Her eyes unclouded by miff-dom, she thought the place felt more like a Japanese restaurant than any we've encountered outside Japan. Reticent. I acquiesced. There were again many tables occupied and again no one at the counter. We pressed for the sushi bar and after getting the okay from the sushi chef we were seated.

I glanced at the drink menu and remembered that they have an unusually diverse sake menu. After a sake-tasting at Hi-Time the previous day I was really hungry to compare these to one of my favorites, Hananomai. Happily they actually had it. Sadly it came only in a 35-dollar 720 ml bottle. The hell with it, I said, and we ordered it. I felt so reckless. It tasted great.

I noticed whole scallops in the refrigerated bays so we got them sashimi and they were very good indeed. The itamae mentioned proudly that they were from Japan. They were excellent, but something notable was on both sides of the scallops; seaweed that neither of us had we encountered before. One was transparent and very crunchy, the other pale green and had a lot of personality for a seaweed: a notably sharp herbal taste though not bitter. "Different" seaweed? That's impressive.

We noted one small wall-menu where a few cooked items were listed in English; baked shell-fish and such. But the bulk of the larger marker-board menu was in Japanese only. I could glean "fresh" toro, octopus, aji and other sashimi selections. But there was just too much kanji for me to read the rest.

When he came for our next order we said that we could read a few but wanted to know the others. "Ano...", he stalled, "that's food that Japanese eat." We asked him to pick a few but he seemed reticent. We pushed hard and said we had eaten lots of Japanese food and only disliked natto. He stalled and I thought I was going to have to really muscle the guy by making him read out the whole menu. In retrospect I think maybe he was just lost in thought. Finally he issued a few dictates and off his wife and the waitress went.

First we received "sakura ebi" or "Cherry Blossom sweet-shrimp". These were very small whole shrimp, maybe a half-inch long, eyes and legs and all, and a very bright pink. They had been lightly boiled, it seemed, and were in a parfait glass on yet two more novel seaweeds. A few super-fine strands of crimson-red dried chili pepper were on top. To the side was a mayonnaise with a mild red chili powder on top. It was fabulous. They explained everything we asked about, which was plenty. These shrimp were from his home prefecture of Shizuoka and only one shop in all of the USA had these and it was his shop. His brother ran a fish import place and he always got the very best of the very best.

Next, they brought us micro-sardines with strands of a very mild shallot mixed in a small bowl. It included miyogo or ginger flower. It was tasty. Clearly I wanted to be this man's best friend so I asked if he drank sake. He said no, but his wife was glad to take up the slack. We introduced ourselves: She is Mamiko and he is Koz, probably short for Kazuya. We began chatting about all things Japanese. He has a large HD TV dead-center behind the counter. It played what appeared to be Japanese television, with the sound down. So periodically we'd discuss an onsen or site of natural beauty that might pop up. He was quite hospitable.

Koz-san has owned and run the place for some 6 years, buying it about 20 minutes after we visited the previous installation. He had worked at Benihana in Newport Beach for some 15 years, and before that had a restaurant of his own for a few years in City of Industry where it was apparently "very hard". Mamiko's English is excellent and his English is fine but it does take a moment each time to get traction. He starts his sentences and sprinkles them literally with "ano" which is a buffer word like "well..." or a more modern "like...".

They asked Nancy if we liked tofu, and before I could clap a hand over her mouth they were off and running. Underscoring that their tofu was made in-house, they brought us each a little bowl of tofu with myriad other things, nori, salmon roe, sturgeon roe (caviar), some small mushrooms I haven't seen before, and some other stuff. We mixed it up real good and I have to say it was just fabulous.

We got a grilled fish cake that was simply amazing. Surely produced in-house, it was great tasting as a fish cake but it also had some kind of savory sauce that made it, as Nancy said, about the best fish cake we've ever had. Imagine ooh-ing and aah-ing over a damn fish cake. It's such a delight to encounter a real chef.

Incidentally the background music, at quite low volume, was traditional Japanese music with shamisen and shakuhachi and a significant part of a very pleasant ambiance, with the wood and bamboo trappings. Not kitsch and claptrap, mind you, but the traditional outfitting of Japanese kappo restaurants." - Gerry