Sushi Kanpai Santa Monica — Restaurant in Santa Monica

July 2025 We had a very nice dinner here on a Tuesday night. Wasabi was our server, and was good attentive and made us laugh. We were introduced to the owner, Miho, who graciously gave us a sample of special chilled Japanese sake. We ordered a few things from the sushi bar, like the Hokkaido scallops which were beautifully presented and melted in your mouth. The amberjack was also devine! My husband enjoyed the Volcano Ramen which is spicy good. I love their battera sushi, salmon skin salad and vegetable tempura! Thank you Wasabi and Miho for a wonderful evening!

March 2025 Happy Hour review 7 days a week 12noon-6pm ( kitchen closes at 3pm- 4:30pm)

Fantastic food choices for HH! I love their Salmon Skin Salad and vegetable tempura, as well as the agedashi tofu. If you like lemony fish, their salmon collar with lemon is heavenly! Their choices for alcohol for HH is either beer or sake. I love Kanpai Sushi for authentic Japanese food.

October 2024.

Last night I came for dinner. My friend and I had a quick dinner. She ordered the salmon sushi plate. The presentation was beautiful. Each salmon was described well by the staff. She also ordered an a la carte chicken teriyaki, which she said was very tasty. I ordered the Volcano Ramen at level 2. It was spicy good! I don't think I could handle a level 3, but those who really like spicy hot dishes, go for it. The Volcano consists of ground pork, egg and more. The Volcano Ramen comes in one size, the large bowl, which I wasn't able to finish because I got full. There is a disclaimer on the menu that one cannot take home any leftover ramen. Overall, our dinner was simple and delicious. The staff here are all Japanese and many of the menu items share the origin in Japan where it comes from. This makes Kanpai very authentically Japanese. I am back after 2 weeks and I brought a new friend! We both ordered from the Lunch Set menu. There are lots of options during lunch and reasonably priced. Generous portions. The ramen broth is so delicious! The mini donburi bowls are filling! I have had the Unagi/ eel and the Salmon Ikura and both are really really good! The small salad has a wonderful unami dressing and the panacotta dessert is a wonderful palette cleanser.

We both ordered the RAMEN SET and shared a hot sake ( small ) from the Happy Hour menu. We both loved our meal and the shared sake and we will definitely return!

There is a small parking lot in the back. Make sure you read the painted marked spots for Kanpai.

September 2024

My friend stumbled across this authentic Japanese restaurant on Wilshire ( 22nd- 23rd block) and was very impressed! My friend lives part time in Tokyo and part time here in LA. She was reluctant to try this Japanese restaurant because she has high standards of the quality of what Japanese food should taste like!

The menu is vast, but we ordered from the Lunch Menu $20 we both chose a ramen: Miso Soy or Yuzo Shio and then we both chose a Don bowl. She chose the ikura ( salmon eggs) and I chose the Eel. The broth on both were sooooooooooooo tasty and flavorful. This meal comes with a salad with a miso dressing and wonderful panacatta dessert with a berry sauce. YUM YUM YUM!!!

There is also a Happy Hour menu that looked like something to try...

TLDR; don't dine in unless you have 1.5-2 hours to spare.

My first issue was that there was no sign posted anywhere on their windows or door saying they would close for 1.5 hours midday. I discovered this place by foot traffic, so I spent 20 mins just waiting for them to open. Second, service from the chef was incredibly slow. As the ONLY person who was dining in, it took 50 mins for them to serve me a small ramen and take a parfait to go. Even after asking to take dessert to go, and that it's okay if it doesn't look pretty because I had to go back to work, it took 15 mins. This is after they said it was already half done. There is no cooking involved for parfaits - only assembling. It's nice they care about presentation but my priority was time, not appearance. It should not have taken 15 mins. The waitress was attentive. The waiter was kind, offering me miso soup while I wait to remedy the situation (though I didn't have the time to eat my dessert let alone hot soup). Those were my only constellations to this 2 star review. The waiter suggested that next time I should order ahead instead. Indeed. From observation, I could tell they were prioritizing online orders over a physical human in their restaurant. As a business owner, I would have prioritized the people physically in the restaurant because they would 1) be the ones who will take the time to write a review 2) leave a tip 3) enjoy the food fresh as opposed to those picking up. In my opinion, the chef needs to learn to be more efficient or the manager needs to hire another food handling employee if they're so overwhelmed with orders. Lastly, the chashu in the ramen was delicious but otherwise everything else was just alright and overpriced. I was not impressed by the taste. Perhaps they specialize more in sushi. Instead of Doordash, I chose to go to this local restaurant because I thought it would be faster and fresher. It was fresher but was not worth clocking back in late to work for. I will not be coming back...

In general, overpriced and total scam for customer service .Food was good but this is the only reason why I give them 2 stars instead of 1. It was the worst dining experience either in California or at any Japanese restaurants I've been all over the world. We were traveling as a group from Europe and I wanted to make sure that we will sit all together on Saturday evening. So I called them and asked to book us a table. They said that we have to spend 50$ per person then. It was first ring but I ignored that. When we came for dinner some of other group was not really hungry and they ordered a little plate or drinks (included expensive sake), so in total we were above 50$ per person but they said then that it means without drinks. Atmosphere was very uncomfortable there because the waiter was reminding us all the time that we have to order more to spend enough money in his restaurant. And you know what was the most funny? The place was almost empty, maybe 1 or 2 tables occupied besides ours. I can understand that they were crowded with a long line outside and we were ordering just beer. But we ate quite much for the group (more than 450$ with drinks together) and instead of being grateful that we came to visit them and let earn half-thousand dollars they were anyway upset. So I recommend anyone to avoid this greedy place. There are so many good sushi in California for good affordable price and...