Sushi Nishi Ya — Restaurant in Glendale

The omakase experience at this restaurant is simply sub par for the price point.

The chef is very friendly when you start talking to him but he and his staff are very pretentious about his art, and undeservingly so. This sushi restaurant simply doesn't even come close to omakase from master sushi chefs in Seattle or Boston yet he is charging prices which significantly surpass any omakase with a master sushi chef in those other cities.

What's wrong here? 1st: Temperature. I had a mix of refrigerator cold albacore sushi with sauce, to nearly frozen crab and shrimp in a citrus based sauce, to warm, almost hot, rice in a nigiri with room temperature (and very tasty) tuna. 2nd: Flavor balance. Aside from the flavor and texture issues that come from the improper temperature, not a single dish I had left me with a complex favor of different kinds of umami. All dishes were extremely basic, utilizing the sweet flavor from the fish, salt from soy sauce or sour from citrus and vinegar. Nothing truly came together for an amazing treat for your taste buds (except the tuna). On top of that, for my last sushi I received a very spicy tuna roll that completely burned out my pallet, ruining all of the delicate sweet flavors I had in other dishes. I felt like I was assaulted with spice all of a sudden because he wanted me to stop eating (which I already said I was on my last bite so why do that?) And for scale, my typical maximum amount for eating sushi is an 8 piece nigiri or 1 specialty maki 3rd: Price. A sushi chef who can't get temperature and flavor balance right has no business being this expensive and pretentious.

What's right here? 1st: Quality. The chef knows how to find, select, and prepare top quality seafood and I do think that is valuable 2nd: Service. While most of my interactions with the staff were rather terse, I understand they have a lot of rude folks who come by who don't understand omakase so I was okay with a little bit of uneasiness there. I received a hot towel immediately after sitting, all of my dishes were promptly cleared away and my drink was refilled immediately. Fantastic service

The thing that really makes me sad to write this review is that he is a very good sushi chef and overall the sushi was very good, definitely above average. I would have been happy with a charge of about 70-75% of what I was charged because that is the value of the experience I had. Unfortunately, I definitely can not return because I refuse to pay $145 (for just myself) again for a slightly above average omakase (average across multiple cities across the US,...

Sushi Nishi-ya offers one of my favorite omakase dinners in the city. The preparations are delicious. Chef Kenji will just ask what you don't like and then stay away from that as he prepares the meal. The opening dish is a house specialty, tuna with a small bed of seaweed and sprouts drizzled with a velvety miso sauce that hits like an umami bomb. The closing dish is a crab hand roll. Everything in between is just wonderful. Chef Kenji is really good at augmenting the flavors of the fish with specific sauces (snapper and saba are standouts) or a thin piece of translucent seaweed draped over fresh and smoked salmon. The rice is well done - slightly sticky but still granular - and the ratio of rice to fish is excellent and biased in favor of the fish, allowing flavor to speak with the rice as a scaffold that does not overdominate. If available the uni dish allows comparison of the sweetly oceanic flavor of Santa Barbara uni with the more intense Hokkaido version. Snow crab and shrimp are lightly glazed with a sweet syrup and rested atop a slice of lemon. Massive oysters are serve in the shell, bracingly cold and submerged in ponzu and green onion. You will never leave hungry, because once the standard meal is done he will keep preparing plates until you tell him to stop. On the furthest iteration I have gone with the menu, I ended up eating catfish eggs, which I had never tried before. The sake list is small but serviceable: 300 ml bottles of producers like Onikoroshi, Kikusui, and Hakkaisan. Wine by the glass and ice cold beer also available. Sitting at a table allows you to order a la carte, but bar is omakase-only. I have never sat anywhere other than the bar and I don't plan to...I'd prefer to leave myself in the hands...

The experience and tasty fresh sushi deserves 5 stars, not to mention the attention and service we received. The high priced bill was worth every penny. I couldn't help but compare how all the travel shows we watched when they would visit a true sushi chef in Japan who would just serve whatever fresh fish he had, was such a similar experience. The difference was, of course, not being in Japan and eating all local native fish and other creatures from their waters, but we still were able to try fish imported from places like Spain, Canada, Scotland, and our neighboring Santa Barbara. It was awesome sharing this special experience with the love of my life who was just as open minded trying everything the chef put in...