Hamasaku — Restaurant in Los Angeles

A very easy restaurant to miss as it is tucked into a corner of a plaza on Santa Monica & Sepulveda...and has valet parking. Only in LA, huh.

Anyway, location aside, this place had some of the best sushi I've ever had!

I am by no means a sushi snob. I'll eat at any sushi place from revolving sushi bars to fancy sushi, to sushi made by koreans. This place truly knocked my socks off!

We started with edamame, black cod, rock shrimp and shishito peppers. Oh. My. God. We cleaned out all those appetizers so fast. The black cod was so flaky and flavorful and soft that it literally melted in your mouth - a toothless person could easily eat that. The rock shrimp had a perfect amount of tempura to complement (not overwhelm) the shrimp with a rockin' sauce on the side (hehe puns). Shishito had really really great flavors and edamame is sort of hard to mess up, right?

A coworker and I split the spicy tuna crispy rice, charlize tacos, dj spider roll and blondie roll. Honestly, each one was better than the last. My favorite of these was probably the crispy rice but they were all really delicious. Everything had a great balance of flavor (with a variety of different seafoods inside) and very little soy sauce was needed.

My other coworkers went more traditionalist and ate sashimi, omasake, cucumber rolls, etc and they all loved their dishes. The restaurant was very accommodating in creating rolls sans rice for all the dieters in the group as well.

This place is definitely pricey, with rolls costing an average of $20 a pop, so the bill adds up pretty quickly. However, if you want to eat somewhere that's a bit fancier and has good quality sushi, this is the...

Horrible experience. Went to Hamasaku on 10/19/2013. I am in town on vacation from Dallas, TX. I made reservations to this place online two weeks in advance. I seen that this place had good reviews do I wanted to give it a try, since I am a sushi lover. Well my reservation was at 8. They did seat me and my guest on time. We ordered 3 rolls and the rock shrimp appetizer. Our EA roll came out within 5 minutes... Weird, isn't the appetizer supposed to come out first? We finished the roll in about 5-10 minutes and waited another an additional 10 minutes for the rock shrimp. Then there is where things went worse. The restaurant became more busy. And it seems like the service became poorly, more than it already was. My guest and I was out of water for 5 minutes before anyone came around for a refill. Other tables.. that came and ordered after us got their food prior to us. We sat an additional 20 minutes after we finished the rock shrimp before we called our waiter, that never came check on us the whole time we were there. He said he will check on it and came back and stated the chefs are working on it and it will be right out. Another 15 minutes passed and my guest and I were fed up. We called the manager and told her what was going on. She did take care of our bill and apologize saying she was sorry for the horrible service because they were busy. I understand they were busy.. but busy to forget about a young couple just sitting there? Looking concerned as to why we never got the rest of our order? Needless to say, when we come visit LA again we are not wasting our time...

I did not go to the restaurant so this is about the staff and experience. I wanted to host a birthday here and made reservations for a 10-12 person party. They accepted my reservation and then sent an email asking I submit our full order ahead of time. I fully understand how difficult it can be to make ready to order food for such a large party. The pre-fixe menu they made was around $1,200. I called to explain that the party would like to also order more when we get there and would try to help accommodate them to make it easier. They then cancelled my reservation and I called again. I re-explained and they said I could keep my reservation. sent back a small list of confirmed items. They then sent me back the $1,200 list and said I had to order all of this or remove or add a few items.

This was for a special experience (was getting omakase @ $130 pp - they have lower prices adv but there isn’t a lower option) and they ruined the experience and excitement. I am no longer going and feel that we would have been faced with poor service based on the multiple conversations I had and inaccurate information and being forced to order their pre-fixe menu. It seems like a restaurant that tries to add in extra charges or change things. Saying this having worked in the industry and understanding it would have been easier on them to make a pre-fixe menu but, left a very sour...